Blind Old Kate Part 3 Page 2

CHAPTER 11. IT TAKES A TOUGH MAN TO MAKE A TENDER CHICKEN.


Bonnie and Clyde were pretty looking people
But I can tell you people
They were the devil's children
Bonnie and Clyde began their evil doing
One lazy afternoon down Savannah way
They robbed a store and
Hightailed outa that town
Got clean away in a stolen car
And waited till the heat died down
Bonnie and Clyde advanced their reputation
And made the graduation
Into the banking business
'Reach for the sky' sweet-talking Clyde would holler
As Bonnie loaded dollars in the dewlap bag
Now one brave man-he tried to take 'em alone
They left him lying in a pool of blood
And laughed about it all the way home.
Bonnie and Clyde got to be public enemy number one
Running and hiding
From every American lawman's gun
They used to laugh about dying
But deep inside 'em they knew
That pretty soon they'd be lying
Beneath the ground together
Pushing up daisies to welcome the sun
And the morning dew
Acting upon reliable information
A federal deputation laid a deadly ambush
When Bonnie and Clyde came walking in the sunshine
A half a dozen carbines opened up on them
Bonnie and Clyde
They lived a lot together
And finally
They died together.


During my first spell at J. Walter Thompson, when I was still a student, I was introduced to Simon Woodley, a pompous, overdressed, blonde haired, overweight, plum in the gob prick who turned out to be Lord Simon Woodley, though still a prick. I’d been conscripted to work with this upper crust knob head on some kind of industrial paint product, which was so boring a proposition I’ve forgotten its name. Not that you can’t do something exciting with industrial paint. As I’ve said, any copywriter worth their salt could do just that. But despite his introduction as he slid a chair up to my desk, this wasn’t one. A copywriter, that is.
     “I’m Simon Woodley. And I…. am a copywriter,” he announced as if he was talking to a snotty nosed, first day pupil in his prep school and telling them he was a prefect, “But, I…am a copywriter with a difference. I…am a copywriter with VISION!”

     (This ought to be interesting, I thought.)

     The prick produced an A4 layout pad and a thick, black Pentel and began scribbling. He drew (if you can could call it that) his interpretation of a wall being covered in paint. He wrote (if you could call it that) a headline in the top left hand corner of his ad (if you could call it that): ‘Help! This wall is being obliterated!’

     I Part of the headline was apparently being covered in paint. The whole thing was about as interesting as watching paint dry. Who was saying ‘help!’ Was it the wall? Surely the wall was being covered in a layer of paint, not being obliterated. A hand grenade would probably have obliterated the wall, but paint? I don’t think so. Woodley obviously thought his idea (if you could call it that) was a stroke of genius. I thought it was shit.
     “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said. Then he got up and left, a smile of utter pride on his face. (If you could call it that.) His Lordship came back a day later to look at the layout. He seemed pleased but I couldn’t have cared less. Another upper crust wag came into the office having spotted Woodley on his way past. The two chatted about their previous weekend’s activity.
     “I got my hands on a superb piece of machinery,” Woodley said smugly, “A Chevrolet Stingray. It belongs to a cousin of mine. He doesn’t deserve to own such a motor, he’s such a bore.”
     “It takes one to know one,” I thought.

THE REAL THING

One of Richard Smith’s heroes was Ed McCabe, the copywriter, creative partner of Scali, McCabe, Sloves, the agency he founded in the 1960s, and turning out Famous campaigns for Volvo, Perdue Chicken and Maxell tapes amongst others. Richard would often recite headlines from McCabe ads and shake with laughter and he often showed me.
     “This is how you write ads, squire,” he’d say, “’It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken’, for Perdue Chicken. That’s fucking genius. And look. That strange little guy in the picture really is Frank Perdue.” He’d say some of the lines over and over again,
     “Beat the system. Buy a Volvo. Beat the system. Buy a Volvo. Beat the system. Buy a Volvo.” as if he was reciting from some kind of holy book.

     In this case, the picture was of a car transporter loaded with broken down cars leaving a town. Going the other way, into the town, was a transporter loaded with brand new Volvos.
     “There’s no one tougher in this business than Ed McCabe,” Richard told me with a sense of admiration, “He once said to a client who was arguing over the validity of a headline he’d written, ‘What ‘s the matter with you? Can’t you get women or something?” a torrent of laughter exploding from somewhere deep in his chest, “Imagine that! Just fucking well imagine that!”

     When Richard had cracked a headline for an ad we were working on, he’d pin it to the wall and read it aloud, again and again with an enormous sense of pride – rightly so, in my opinion. One of the best headlines he wrote was for a pitch for the Irish Tourist Board, the campaign based on testimonials by famous people who had homes in Southern Ireland, and one of them was a quote supposedly from film director, John Huston:
     ‘It isn’t London. It isn’t Paris. It isn’t New York. But most of all, it isn’t Hollywood. Thank the Lord, oh thank the Lord.”

     This remains one of the best headlines I’ve ever read along with one Richard wrote for the launch of the Jaguar XJS in 1974: Above a picture of the new car was:
     ‘May 11th, 1974. A black day for Modena, Stuttgart and Turin.’

DRAGSTER

Like Melissa Story, Richard Smith was pretty scary but in an entirely different way. He was a bloke, for a start - built like a brick wall, with heavy horn rimmed glasses and longish hair. He wasn’t that tall but was square set, like his jaw and somewhat reminiscent of a Sherman tank. He had arms like legs, legs like tree trunks but small hands and feet. Richard was slightly pigeon-toed, which inexplicably gave him a further sense of menace, especially when he was cross and on the approach, with his arms hanging by his sides like those of a gorilla, and had they been a tad longer, the knuckles would have dragging on the floor. His voice was deep with a slight tinge of an American accent and he claimed to be ‘transatlantic’. His wife, Mariella, was Scandinavian American, she and Richard spending most of their vacations in the States, he racing drag cars, a sport about which he was crazy.

     He had a deep, loud laugh, which he loved to exercise as often as possible, but was volatile to the point where he could change from a giant cuddly teddy bear to a raging Grizzly in less time than it look for one of the buggers to rip your head from your shoulders, an act, I was sure, Richard himself was entirely capable of. He was deeply intelligent, as articulate as without the falsetto, had a business mind second to none and also, like Melissa Story, didn’t suffer fools. In fact he didn’t waste time on them and didn’t bother dismantling anyone he considered crass or stupid, as Melissa might have done, but preferred a more physical approach. An agitated account director by the name of Sandy Eacher – Sandy Idiot, according to Richard – came marching into the outer office one afternoon, arse poking out and pipe puffing away in his gob like he was some kind of exasperated steam engine to complain about something Richard had written that he didn’t think was quite the ticket. Luckily for him, Sandystopped in the open doorway of Richard’s office. I’d presented the layout to Sandy and he immediately started waffling on, and with me in tow, stuck out his arse, relit his pipe, and strode purposefully towards Richard’s office.
     “Richard,” he began in his high-pitched squeaky public school, perverted prefect voice, “I’ve read your stuff, hmm? Puff Puff. I have to say I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the cricket stump here. It’s understandable, ‘cos you’re new to the agency and certainly new to this particular client and the brand, and you’re obviously not aware of the client’s standpoint when it come to this particular brief, hmm? Puff Puff Puff? Now, I am prepared to pitch this to client but I would like you to consider and alternative solution and, furthermore….”

     Up to this point Richard had been sitting in his Mies van der Rohe, his knees curled under his chin, reading Drag Racer Monthly. Now he was staring at Sandy, his face showing the consistency and expression of a standing stone. I remember thinking, any minute now, he’s going to unleash one of his verbal tirade’s at the diminutive, twitching account director. He didn’t. He merely placed his feet on the floor, sat up in the chair. His right leg shot out like a piston and he kicked the door shut in Sandy’s face with such force, the glass in the frosted window cracked, the door itself coming to rest with about half an inch to spare from the end of Sandy’s pipe, still clenched between his teeth.

     Sandy muttered something like, “Well, REALLY!” Then, in obvious shock, judging by his red face and quivering eyebrows, turned on his heel and marched away, his arse not stuck out quite as firmly, his pipe clenched between his white knuckled fingers instead of his chinless gob.

     “So that’s how you deal with account directors,” I also remember thinking.

     I’d first met Richard Smith when he was creative director of KMP. He interviewed me and my then writer, Tony Broadbent, after we’d been made redundant after a 4 month period as a creative team at FCB just before the 3 day week, brought about my the miner’s strike of 1974, kicked in. We were later interviewed by Dennis Barham, creative director of Benton and Bowles, who asked us back for a second interview at which Richard Smith himself was present, and though he greeted Tony and I with enthusiasm, was apparently pissed off that Dennis employed us without reference to him, as he’d just been taken on as deputy creative director. We were put in an office next to Richard’s so that, I always thought, he could keep and eye on us. Richard and Tony didn’t see eye to eye over most things, and Richard was very critical about the work we produced, especially my art direction, which was about the time he told me that nothing less than perfection was acceptable.

     There was no doubting Richard’s credibility. He had a hatful of D&AD awards under his belt from his time at CDP, KMP, and from his own consultancy, Alders, Marchant and Smith and and Cogent Elliot, a Birmingham agency he turned from a provincial nowhere place into an award winning front runner. I knew I could learn from him and started to do so in spades when he coupled Tony with another art director and took me under his wing. I can honestly say, I learned more from Richard Smith in the 9 months I worked as his art director at Benton and Bowles than I did in the 5 years I’d spent at JWT. I had to work for it, mind, and several times he carpeted me till, in his view, I started to get things right. I just got stuck in and weathered the bruises. He knew more about photography and photographers and how to craft really good advertising than anyone I’d met up till then, and he was just a mere writer! And boy, did I learn! We had loads of fun and he introduced me to a lot of very talented people – art directors and photographers amongst them, and he was always exciting to be around.

     To Richard Smith, the car he drove was as important as his right arm. He couldn’t decide what company car to have so drove a couple from the Benton and Bowles company pool. The first was a 3 litre Ford Granada, Ford’s top of the range limo at the time.
     “They’ve only given me a fuckin’ Ford Grenadier, Chief,” he announced with his usual burst of laughter one morning, “The thought of it! ME, DRIVIN’ AROUND TOWN IN A FUCKIN’ GRENADIER!”
     He took Tony and I around the block in the thing, steering with the flat of one hand on the wheel, “This ain’t real power steering,” he announced as we skimmed through Admiralty Arch and down the Mall, his usual local test strip for cars, “It ain’t even proper steering!”

     Next up was a white Triumph Dolomite Sprint.
     “Guess what? They’ve only given me a bloody Triumph Dolly! C’mon, boys. Let me show you how to change gear properly.” So off we went to the Buck House drag strip again. As we passed under the arch, the lesson began.
     “It’s all about timing and the right amount of revs. The secret of a really efficient gear change is to not use the clutch and to keep your right foot flat on the floor.”

     He blipped the throttle, changed down and whacked his foot to the floor. The car took off like a scalded Triumph Dolly. His concentration was intense the adrenalin pumping so fast you could almost hear it. Then, without using the clutch pedal, and as he’d said, keeping his foot flat to the floorboards, he changed gear. The engine screamed and the car lurched forward with a screech of tyres. He changed gear twice more in the same fashion till we were approaching the Palace at an alarming rate, Queen Victoria looking to come through the windscreen form her perch and join as for the ride. He smoothly applied the brakes and rounded the corner at then end of the Mall like he was chauffeuring her Majesty. Tony and I were scared shitless.
     “See, it’s easy when you know how. What’re you hiding down there for, Antoine?” as he sometimes called Tony.

     I liked cars, too and suggested he gave on of the new Datsun 260Z sports cars a try. Having laughed like a drain at my innocent suggestion, he and I did go and have a look in the showroom and I know he was tempted, but he finally settled for a 2+2E type Jaguar, blaming his choice on the fact that he was merely being loyal to the company as they had the Jaguar account. Richard knew I knew this was bullshit and that he just wanted a new toy to play with. Tony and I had a ride in that too, and I have to say, with its 12 cylinder engine and wide wheels, it was an amazingly quick but smooth ride. Richard would never have admitted it, but he loved his bright red, over-the-top plaything.

     Richard Smith never stayed very long at any agency, seeming to get frustrated by something or other whether it was management incompetence, a falling out with a creative team the agency wouldn’t get rid of or just plain boredom. Whatever, his style of parting from most places was legendary. The executives at Cogent Elliot parked their cars one behind the other on a steep hill, and come the time to go with his severance cheque tucked safely in his pocket, he drove his company Range Rover to the top of the hill, turned it so that the bonnet was pointing towards the queue of parked cars at the bottom of the hill, and released the handbrake. Enough said.

     Richard ran a little company, Wild Horses, that exported bolt on souped-up bits for cars and one day he gave me a straight through exhaust system for my 1500 VW Beetle. The outlet was as wide as a stovepipe and made a very satisfying thunderous noise and gave me a couple of extra horsepower. It made me feel like a real racer and I was stopped one Saturday near the Oval by cops in an unmarked car. Apparently, I’d cut them up and they gave me a real dressing down telling me if didn’t stop driving like a lunatic, I was heading for an accident. They were right. I crashed the thing a couple of weeks later.

     Mike Reynolds was already at Benton and Bowles when Tony and I arrived. He was officially one of two deputy creative directors, the other being Chris Rudd. Smithy decided he was taking over both their roles, which he did. Mike eventually decided to move on and offered me a job at a place called the Sales Promotion Company, which I accepted. When I told Richard Smith, he grabbed me by the lapels and held me up against the wall, telling me what and idiot I was being, and that I should stay in a proper agency and work on Jaguar with him. I didn’t listen. He sent me to see Dennis Barham who offered to match the new salary but I still didn’t listen. It was probably the biggest mistake I ever made while working in the advertising business. Richard Smith went back to the States, having launched the new Jaguar eventually falling out with the B&B management. No surprises there. I never saw him again.

Freshen-up, with 7 Up.

Archie Andrews: “Brough! Brough! Where are you, Brough?”
Peter Brough: “I’m here, Archie. Right behind you as always.”
A.A.: “Ooh! You made me jump! Are we on the radio again tonight, Brough?”
P.B.: “That’s right, Archie.”
A.A.: “Oh.”
P.B.: “You sound disappointed, Archie.”
A.A.: “Well, it means I have to stay in the box, doesn’t it?”
P.B.: “But you can have a nice rest, Archie.”
A.A.: “But it’s so boring. I’d rather be part of the action.”
P.B.: “But on Radio, there isn’t any action. It’s just me and my two voices.”
A.A.: “What two voices?”
P.B.: “My voice and yours, of course.”
A.A.: “But I have my own voice, Brough.”
P.B.: “Actually, Archie, you don’t. You can’t talk.”
A.A.: “Of course I can. I’m talking now, aren’t I?”
P.B.: “Er, no. You’re not actually. I’m doing all the talking. I’m a ventriloquist.”
A.A: “What’s a ventrillogist?”
P.B.: “Ventriloquist Archie. I’m a VENTRILOQUIST! It means I can throw my voice without moving my lips.”
A.A.: “Throw it where?”
P.B.: “Into you, Archie, old thing.”
A.A.: “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
P.B.: “Well, like it or not, old fruit, that’s the way it is.”
A.A.: “Gollocks!”
P.B.: “What did you, I mean, I say?”
A.A.: “You never were any good at this, were you, Brough?”
P.B.: “Bollocks!”
A.A.: “You mean, gollocks.”
P.B.: “I know what I said.”


* * * * * * * * * * * *


CHAPTER 12. THE 7TH FLOOR – JWT HIGH LIFE.


You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

You had me several years ago
When I was still quite naive
Well, you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
But you gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me
I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee, and

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee, and
You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

Well, I hear you went up to Saratoga
And your horse naturally won
Then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun
Well, you're where you should be all the time
And when you're not, you're with
Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Wife of a close friend, and

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you

You're so vain (so vain)
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?

James Bond sat on his office chair in the centre of his newly refurbished office on the 7th floor of 40 Berkeley Square, one leg crossed over the other at a right angle, his right ankle resting on his left thigh and the gleaming Gucci shoe catching the early morning sunlight through the window. The fingers of his large, heavily Rolexed, hairy backed left hand fiddled idly with an uncharacteristically loose thread hanging from the hem of his dark blue, Huntsman, of Saville Row, trousers. The man’s heavily featured, sun-tanned face was ideally set off by startlingly thick black eyebrows, and neat black hair, swept straight back with a sheen that matched that of the shoes, a turn-up of small curls allowed to protrude and hang stylishly over the collar of his Hawes & Curtis shirt.

     This wasn’t really James Bond, but in many people’s minds, Michael Cooper-Evans fitted Ian Flemming’s character and legendary charisma just as well as Sean Connery, except for the actor’s scarily portrayed cruel streak. As the senior account director and board director on both the Rowntree Macintosh and Brooke Bond Oxo accounts at J.Walter Thompson, at the same time fulfilling the role of the perfect gentleman, Michael didn’t suffer fools. 3 other people were in the room: Copywriter, Richard Barker, Robin Tuck, the agency’s head of account planning, (to be explained later) and me. Robin was explaining the conclusions to some kind of research he’d conducted on the Smarties account, which Richard and I worked on as the creative team. Judging by the look on his face, either Michael wasn’t convinced about the research conclusions or someone had stuffed a dead rat up his nose. He certainly seemed to find the loose thread on his trousers considerably more interesting than what Robin was saying.

     It had always been pretty obvious that the two men didn’t particularly care for one another. You could say they were as chalk and cheese, the White Cliffs of Dover and Cheddar Gorge being an apt comparison. Here on the one chair was the smoothly turned out ex- 11th Hussars captain, ex-team manager for Rob Walker F1 Racing when Stirling Moss was the driver, and former Zermatt ski instructor, forced to quit when he hit a tree at 60mph, permanently damaging a leg. On the other chair sat the LSE educated, blustering, scruffily bearded, chain-smoker, in a cheap grey suit he must’ve slept in for the previous six months and a pair of equally cheap shoes, which had clearly never having been on a date with a shoe brush or polish, and with the laces curiously

     Robin always smiled enthusiastically when he spoke, his yellow teeth pinched rat-like by his forcibly stretched lips as he delivered long, drawn out paragraphs of wisdom between puffs of the cigarette he always held close to his face, the drooping ash, generally an inch and a half long, poised precariously before cascading down the slopes of his lapel a and/or tie. It was clear he’d noticed Michael’s thread preoccupation. Michael suddenly scooted his office chair across the room to the sidewall desk unit, opened a drawer, took out a pair of scissors (probably Gucci) and proceeded to extend and carefully snip the loose thread from the hem of his trousers. He replaced the scissors in the drawer, with a clatter, slammed the drawer shut, and scooted back. Poor Friar Tuck completely lost his own thread choking over his words. Arguably, it was a pretty dismissive manoeuvre on Michael's part, but strategically fitting and stylish for an ex -11th Hussars officer or James Bond. But then this was the 7th floor of J. Walter Thompson and Co., 40 Berkeley, where the agency’s elite account men hung out, and where such actions were considered as cool as cool to lesser mortals such as Richard and I.

     Unlike all other British advertising agencies, the account men who resided on JWT’s 7th floor were called ‘reps,’ and clients referred to as ‘customers’. This always struck me as having a more friendly and personable local grocer ring about it, especially on the side of those whose products we were committed to selling to the general public. A ‘customer’ was human with requirements to be fulfilled. A ‘client’, was a cold fish who made demands. Whether it was the terminology used on not, the 7th floor was way out in front when it came to keeping its customers happy, keeping the business in the agency, and running the kind of advertising that was good for the agency’s reputation including quite famous campaign for, Smarties, Kit-Kat, Polo, After Eight, Black Magic, Rolex and Oxo. The 7th floor was also where the agency bar was. The wide picture windows looked out across the exclusive rooftops of Mayfair. The bar was exclusive. One didn’t just wander in. One had to be invited by a board director. Well, of course, one did.

THE REGIMENT

Chris Thomas, deputy managing director, the most senior board member on the 7th floor, Michael Cooper-Evans’ immediate superior, (though it was almost inconceivable that he had one), was obviously the man in charge. Tall, greying and distinguished looking in a landed gentry sort of way, Mr. Thomas worked incessantly, leaning forward from an extremely plush sofa writing fountain pen to pad on the glass coffee table. His glass door fronted office strategically situated adjacent to the lifts, so he only had to glance sideways to see who’d just come out of the lift, Thomas was in his office, jacket off and working away, by 7.30 each morning. Understandably, the other 7th floor occupants were never late for work. It was as if the JWT 7th floor was the command post for the whole agency. There were no raw recruits or common foot soldiers here - just officers and a couple of generals. It wasn’t surprising then, that several senior JWT ‘reps’ came from a military backgrounds. Richard and I worked with 3 of them. There was Michael Cooper-Evans from the 11th Hussars, John Soames, who’d been a Guards officer, and John Muir, ex-Household Cavalry who’d also served time in tenks. (Tanks, to you and me.) It occurred to me there was some kind of natural connection between the military and advertising. Both used the same terminology: strategy, planning, field research, clearance, pilot, road blocking, sweeps, fighting, vehicle, hit, kill, traffic, bleed, targets.

     Whether this was the case or not, apart from being a very good looking, immaculately turned out, obviously Guardsman shaped individual, John Soames didn’t really seem to fit either the military or advertising worlds. Basically, he was too nice a guy, in his black or grey pinstriped Saville Row, Huntsman suits, perfectly trimmed, thick black hair and permanent suntan, he was totally laid back, his whiter than white teeth, always displayed in a wide smile. This would probably explain why John wasn’t a member of the 7th floor elite, but lodged instead in the dark murky world of the rival rep group on the 2nd floor where, senior board director, Alan Dolby, a slightly overweight gay man, with a white handkerchief permanently protruding from his left jacket sleeve, and a ‘mythe’ full of marbles, ruled the roost. Apart from beautiful Sloane type women, John’s main pre-occupation was lunch, his attention rarely diverted from his watch on the run up to ‘that time’ every morning before ‘easing down to Annabels’, as he put it, the exclusive, ultra trendy, ultra expensive, basement restaurant in Berkeley Square.
     “I was in bed with this beautiful girl last night,” he once told Richard and I quite out of the blue, “And she suddenly said, ‘I want to bite it.’ I thought for a second and said, ‘Oh, go on then.’”

     Michael Brophy, another 7th floor officer, was an ex-fleet air arm wing commander with startlingly blue eyes with a discernibly mischievous twinkle in each. He boasted that he had superhuman eyesight, which proved to be true. I shared an office at the back of the building on the second floor at the time and my desk was by the window, which looked out over a deep, wide quadrangle with office windows on all four sides. Brophy called me on the internal phone and told me the headline on the Oxo ad I was working on wasn’t big enough. I asked him if he was taking the piss so he read the line to me. I knew he hadn’t seen the ad but he asked me to look out of the window and up. There he was, grinning at me from a window in the opposite wall five floors above. No binoculars were visible.

     Brophy liked his whisky and would often hang around in the 7th floor bar after work. He told us he’d forgotten he was supposed be going somewhere with his wife one particular evening, and suddenly remembering, left the bar with a certain amount of haste. This was in November, 1972 and the City had been experiencing sudden power cuts so staff were advised not to use the lifts during the evenings. Brophy made the dash towards the ground floor by hurling himself down each block of eight steps one leap at a time. He’d just got up to speed and was half way through a leap when the lights went out.
     “I must have smacked head first into the wall, but I don’t really remember,” he said, “Everything went back but only for a second, so I picked myself up, grabbed the banister rail and managed to stagger down stairs, out into the square and into a cab. I just made the next train home from Victoria. I was pretty knackered with a thumping headache, but I got pretty pissed off at the way people on the train kept staring at me. “I grabbed another cab at the other end, but as I walked up the garden path, my wife opened the front door and screamed like she’d seen a bloody ghost. What she had seen was my shirt soaked red from blood from the split in my forehead. Christ, did she give me hell?”

     Everything about the 7th floor of JWT London seemed super-stylish. Slick, tailored suits were in abundance, the secretary’s and P.A.s would have been comfortable on the pages of Vogue magazine. Even the atmosphere had a certain, sharp rarity about it as you stepped out of the lift. It felt busy but not in a pressured sort of way. It was a cool, smiley, friendly, welcoming, place but the laid-backness was a deliberate illusion, thinly disguising what was a very demanding place to find yourself. You had to be good at your job and live up to expectations. If you didn’t, you’d find yourself quietly removed from the guest list and from whichever account had taken you to the dizzy heights of the 7th floor in the first place.

     The 7th floor demanded the best from everyone and they got it. Somehow they made you step up to the to the challenge. You raised your game. Tried harder. Produced better work. And if those involved on the 7th floor liked what you did, they made sure you knew it. There was no pat on the back or handshake, just a smile and a slow, positive nod. And then you felt proud.

‘Sweet as the moment when the pod went pop.’

HC: “For foock’s sake, Sooty. PUT THAT DOWN!”



* * * * * * *



CHAPTER 13. RISK LIFE. RISK LIMB.


Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

I’d probably been colder but I couldn’t for the life of me remember when. I did remember being as wet and cold at the same time when I was a butcher’s lad during my time as an art student. I cried then. I wasn’t crying now. I was just incredibly pissed off. This was Brands Hatch, Friday 19th March, 1971, the unofficial practice day for the Formula 1 Daily Mail Race of Champions to be held on the following Sunday and I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted to get the hell out of there and was trudging through the horizontal rain that spat into my face like a million needles from the dark, shit coloured clouds, towards the car park where I’d parked my 1967, 1500 VW Beetle, my job done for the day.

     I had no interest in motor racing. The only race meeting I’d ever attended was again at Brands Hatch in the summer of 1966, during my first stint at JWT as a student, and I’d only gone then because Lawrence Hutchins’s photographer mate, John Green, was driving a Mini Marcos in a saloon car event. He only lasted 3 laps before rolling the ugly little bug and breaking his left leg. He didn’t even have the courtesy to crash in view of the main grandstand but did it out in the countryside part of the circuit where no one could see. Where was the fun in that? The rest of the so-called race meeting was equally as boring with a few road going Jaguars and a precariously hotted-up Austin A40 belting around, hopelessly trying to catch a Ferrari sports car half a lap ahead after the first lap. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about amongst the several F1 devotees who raved on about Jim Clark and Graham Hill’s exploits back at art school.

     I was at Brands Hatch this particular day in the line of duty. Richard Barker and I worked on two of the 7th floor’s most prestigious accounts: Brooke Bond Oxo, where we tackled the advertising on the main brand, the famous cube itself, and Rountree Macintosh where we were tasked to produce creative work for Smarties, or the ‘sweeties’, as Michael Copper-Evans, the senior account director on both Rountree and BBO, referred to the famous childrens’ coloured choccie beans. In 1970, Michael, whom, as mentioned previously, was a motor racing devotee and the former team manager of the famous Rob Walker, Stirling Moss partnership, persuaded Brooke Bond Oxo to sponsor Rob Walker’s new team who had acquired Graham Hill, fresh from his twin leg breaking accident at the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix.

     The car was to be liveried in the Walker team of dark blue as the background with some Brooke Bond Oxo decals on the sides and tail fin. This wasn’t a difficult task, but a bit restricting as references to the new Lotus 72, a radically different F1 design to be used by Team Walker the following season weren’t available and we had to make do with the previous Lotus 49, a totally different are far less inspiring shape. Michael and Rob seemed pleased with the results though I did mention that I reckoned I could do a better job given a brand new car a bit more freedom. I was to get my chance. The 1970 season wasn’t a raging success, either for Brooke Bond Oxo Rob Walker, who’s main pilot, Graham Hill’s, best result being 4th at the Spanish Grand Prix. This was also the season which claimed the lives of Piers Courage, and Jochen Rhindt. Not that this meant a lot to me. I’d heard of both of them but was amazed to see a couple of mates almost in tears at a party the day after Rhindt died.

     For 1971, a new arrangement was conjured up. A whole new team was to be formed between Team Surtees, Rob Walker and Brooke Bond Oxo, Graham Hill having packed his famous London Rowing Club colours adorned crash helmet and bow-legged it to drive for the Brabham team. Michael C-E seemed delighted to give me the news that I’d have a brand new John Surtees designed car to play with and freedom to do what I wanted with the livery, within reason. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be involved, but this was a 7th floor job, moreover it was at the behest of Michael Cooper Evans. When I saw the new car, however, it was job done. The team Surtees symbol had always been an arrow – a bit corny, I thought, but the way the front of the Surtees TS9 was shaped, with the wings swept back like those of a jet plane, it was a gift. The solution was obvious – to run a huge white arrow along the entire top of the dark blue car. The car was to be liveried in the Walker It worked. The livery was not only graphically powerful but enhanced the car’s appearance. Well, I thought so. The new Brooke Bond Oxo Rob Walker Team Surtees looked like it meant business and everyone seemed delighted with the finished design. Everyone, that is, with the exception of John Surtees and his delightful sister, Pat.

     Richard Barker had long been a motor sport enthusiast and had regularly taken part in driving competitions including rallies mainly behind the wheel of his Mark 1 Lotus Cortina, one of the most sort after and envied wicked machines amongst petrol heads of the day. This pretty little monster with her characteristic gleaming white low slung body and olive green side flashes, showed absolutely no gratitude for the way her owner cared for and worshipped her, deciding in a fit of inexplicable pique one day to allow her differential to suddenly jam throwing herself and her two occupants into a violent 60 mph 180 degree pirouette, plowing the driver’s side into a roadside forest near East Grinstead. The little madam’s roof crumpled forcing Richard’s head almost down to his knees and breaking his neck.

     Unlike his natural head support, Richard’s enthusiasm for motor sport was un-crumpled and he seemed to know a lot about the character traits of the 1970 F1 drivers including John Surtees. Richard I and had devised a transporter livery for the new team and eagerly sent it of to the Surtees factory in Edenbridge for the attention of Big John himself. In those pre-internet/email days, you couldn’t send a photographic file down the line so we sent artwork in the form of piece of a cardboard adorned with an illustration of the truck in all it’s BBORWTS glory, protected by several transparent overlays and a stiff cover flap. After several days there was no response. Michael called Shirtsleeves who said he hadn’t received anything. The courier company disagreed saying emphatically the package had been signed for at the factory.

     Diplomatically, Michael asked John Surtees if the creative team could visit the factory and have a look at the TS9's new livery, which by then, he suggested, should be approaching completion. Surtees said it wouldn’t be possible. Michael insisted and Richard and I met at the factory the following day. Surtees was about as welcoming as boiling water to a selected lobster but begrudgingly led us to a workshop where the livery was being applied to a jacked up, wheel-less TS9. The paint looked freshly applied and sprayed on a tad hurriedly. The white arrow over the blue body looked distinctly wet. Surtees left us, saying he had some thing urgent to tend to. Suspiciously, Richard and shuffled slowly around the car, at opposite sides.
     “I wanted red,” came a chilling female voice from a corner of the workshop. A woman in her forties, a fur coat and brown backcombed hairdo, stepped forward, “Red is the Team Surtees colour. I don’t see why we can’t have that. It’s not like Oxo are paying us that much. “I’m Pat Surtees,” she announced as if there was a statue of her in Parliament Square, and offering an immaculately manicured, and suitably icy cold, red-taloned, right hand, “I think everything should be in red.”

     The following conversation, such as it was, was thankfully short, Mr. Surtees re-appearing with another guy in white overalls whom he introduced as a design engineer. The guy smiled and said, “Hi,” immediately earning himself a lazar like stare from Sister Death. Richard asked Shirtsleeves if the transporter artwork had turned up but he repeated that he’d never laid eyes on it. Richard politely asked if Surtees could let us know when it turned up, and with a certain amount of relief, we bade our goodbyes and left the workshop.
     “They’re lying!” exclaimed Sherlock Barker as we made our way back to the car park. We decided to have a look around and followed a path around the outside of the factory. In a yard at the back we found a row of dustbins. Inside the second one we found the artwork crudely folded in half and covered in ash. We decided not to confront Frankenstein and his sister with our discovery, believing any admonishment aimed at Surtees and Co. for such a flagrant disregard for their sponsor’s, support and efforts, both financial and otherwise, should come with the full power of 7th floor military wrath. We drove back to Berkeley Square to show Michael what we’d found. Surtees was put right in no uncertain terms. We weren’t told what had been said but Michael C.E. assured us there would be no further problems and that there would be a press launch of the new team in the agency foyer a few days hence.

     A week later, a transporter turned up outside 40 Berkeley Square, and two Team Surtees mechanics, aided by Richard and I and a few others, spent an hour or so getting the Brooke Bond Oxo Rob Walker Team Surtess F1 contender up the front steps, though the double doorway (only possible by taking off the wheels) and into position at the foot of the main stairs. Even though I still had no real interest in motor sport, I thought the car looked magnificent and Michael, Richard and I shared a real moment of pride.

     So here I was in the pissing arctic conditions of Brands Hatch fighting my way back to my cuddly bug in the car park having spent the morning in the F1 paddock doing my best to ensure that all the agreed decals and typography on the Surtees car were correctly positioned and being yelled at by Mr. Surtees from inside the car that putting a decal where I was putting it would upset the balance of the car and may even cause him to crash. But I was out of there at last and thinking I’d take the afternoon off. There wouldn’t be time to get back to Berkeley Square. I’d go home, put my feet up, have a cup of tea and a fag and play the guitar… then came the piercing scream and I froze in my tracks.

     The scream persisted, again, and again, and again, and then dropped a few octaves, becoming a continuous, aggressive snarl. I walked over to the fence by the main straight and looked across to the pits behind the low wall on the other side of the track. The rain was so heavy it was difficult to see anything but something was stirring over there behind the wall. There was some kind of steamy cloud moving slowly along the pit lane towards the exit. I wondered what it was. I knew it wasn’t a racing car. I knew what they sounded like – they’d been boringly blipping away all morning in various garages all over the place. No one had ventured onto the circuit, the rain far too heavy and falling in a thick, almost opaque blanket. So what the hell was it?

     The glowing, steamy, screechy monster thing crawled slowly into the open near the pit lane exit. It did seem to have wheels, I had to admit, gold ones, and the body of whatever it was did seem to be kind of red through the white fog surrounding it. Suddenly the scream hit the air again, but this time it stayed right up high in an earsplitting banshee shriek. The back of the thing slewed from side to side as it slid onto the circuit. Then it took off in a vast wall of spray over the brow of the hill, momentarily out of sight till just a single, massive, blanket, white wall of water appeared on the straight leading to what they called Druid’s Hairpin. Just what kind of wild animal was this, disappearing behind the trees for a split second before cascading round the hairpin and down the hill screaming till my eardrums hurt, rounding the bend at the bottom of the hill, and rocketing along the straight before disappearing out of sight amongst the trees?

     But its cry could still be heard. Just what was it attacking, killing and devouring out there in the country? Just a minute! It was coming back. Getting closer. Then it seemed to slow, the screeching quieting. At the far end of the circuit, I could see where the road reappeared from behind the trees. It was there. The monster. Moving slowly, silently. It seemed to falter for a moment. Even though it was a couple of hundred yards away, I could see it was a car - a racing car. Then it was a monster again, enveloped by the white wall of water and spray. From where I was the sound seemed to almost disappear. The water wall grew higher and wider as the monster progressed, accelerating, it launched itself along the main grandstand straight towards where I was standing transfixed. Then it was passed, gone in a screaming, shrieking, whining tidal wave, its power and terrifying noise reaching through my chest and grabbing my spine, tearing through the skin of my hands cupped over my ears and dissolving my ear drums in its wake before disappearing again over the brow of the hill. This was a monster. A monster in the shape of the 1971 F1 Ferrari 312B controlled by the hands and feet of crazy Swiss driver, Clay Regazzoni and, damn it, I was hooked.

Smarties. WotalotIgot!



*Michael Cooper Evans is the author of several acclaimed books on motor racing including, Private Entrant, Risk life, risk limb, Six Days In August and the biography, Rob Walker. He is also a motor racing photographer of some note.

Usually, at this point, I add a spoof on a radio or TV programme of the time. This isn’t a spoof. Michael Cooper Evans took me for lunch at the London Steak House in Davis Street off Berkeley Square as a thank you for the livery design work for the Brooke Bond Oxo Rob Walker Team Surtees 1971 F1 GP car. Only MCE had the style required to put things the way he did.

     MCE: “Have you ever been to the Monoco Grand Prix?”
     NB: “Unfortunately not. But I’d love to.” MCE: “Well, I’m driving down this year in a chum’s Ferrari. You’re very welcome to come along.”
     NB:“I’d love to. What would it cost?”
     MCE:“About 90 pounds for the seat in the car then a bit more for the hotel and so on. I usually stay at the Café de Paris.”

     I said I’d think about it, but knew I couldn’t afford it and eventually turned the offer down. On reflection, I must have been out of my mind. A trip to Monaco would have been one thing, but to pitch up in such style in ‘a chums Ferrari’ would have taken the biscuit, china pot of Earl Grey, scones with cream and jam et al. I should’ve stolen the money, even killed for it. I remember what Michael said next word for word. MCE: “We’ll be coming back via the wine country, picking up a few bottles of choice red on the way. I’d better be careful not to stash them in the boot. The last time the liquid boiled over. You know, there’s something rather ostentatious about having lunch at the Café de Paris, diving into the pool, swimming a length, climbing out, sweeping up one’s glass of Don Perignon, strolling over to the balcony and looking down just in time to see Graham’s helmet go by at 150 miles per hour.”

     To mark the end of the 1971 season, a non-championship, a 40 lap, F1 event was held at Brands Hatch in the October. Jackie Stewart and Francois Cevert, preformed a couple of slow formation laps on behalf of the Tyrrel team, for whom Stewart had just won his second drivers’ World Championship. On pole position, for the race was Jo Siffert, in his Yardley BRM P160/2, with his teammate, Peter Gethin next to him on the front row alongside third placed, Emerson Fittipaldi in the Gold Leaf Lotus 72. For some reason, Siffert stalled at the start with Gethin and Fittipaldi rocketing away nose to tail, with Hailwood 3rd in the Rob Walker, Brooke Bond Oxo Surtees TS 9, displaying it’s magnificent new livery, which obviously made the machine a lot quicker, Ronnie Peterson in the March next and Jackie Stewart in 5th place.

     The race seemed a bit manic, even for F1, with Gethin and Fittipaldi going at it hammer and tongs at the front, and on the 3rd lap, Hailwood and Peterson collided on the rundown from Druids Bend, letting Stewart through into third place. Siffert was someway down the field and on lap 15 a huge, ominous pall of black smoke rose from somewhere at then end of the fastest part of the circuit, which was out of sight of the main grandstand. The race was stopped and a period of dull, heavy silence followed. I had a track pass, and after 20 minutes made my way from the main grandstand to the track gate. I met photographers’ agent, Julian Seddon, crossing the track back to the grandstand and asked him what had happened.
     “Siffert was killed,” he said as if it was an every day occurrence.

     The ever passionate motor racing photographer Michael Cooper-Evans, had been standing inside the fence at the edge of the track at the end of the notoriously fast stretch of road, known as Hawthorn Hill, the 200mm lens of his Pentax Spotmatic pointed back along the straight as the cars belted towards him at 180 mph. Through the lens, he saw Siffert’s car swerve from side to side, hit the trackside bank, roll upside down and fly through the air towards where he was standing. He clicked off one more shot then threw himself over the fence into the crowd. The car crashed on it’s top and immediately burst into a huge fireball, the highly inflammable magnesium bodywork responding to the ignition of a practically full tank of fuel like a napalm bomb. Siffert, whose only injury was a broken leg, burned to death. Later, ‘Super-Coup’, as Michael Copper-Evans had become affectionately known by JWT staff members, found a small ball of molten plastic near where he’d launched himself over the fence. It was what remained of the Ray Ban sunglasses he’d had perched above his forehead prior to the crash.

MOTORING ON

Michael Cooper-Evans, who most sensible people in JWT admired and revered, drove a hero’s car – a black BMW 2002 coupe, considered one of the coolest means of transport in the advertising fraternity of the 1970s. The car, with its racing streering wheel and wide, lightweight alloys, was perfectly suited to ex-Sterling Moss team manager, Michael’s driving style and James Bond image – seat back, arms outstretched, fully displaying the super masculinity of his Rolex adorned left wrist and suntanned, hair backed hands to the max as he executed his racy, cross armed, F1 steering technique.

     Miles Colbrooke, himself to become MD of JWT’s London office several years later, was at the time one of the rising young account men stars in Michael’s, group. Coming from what could be described as a privileged background the blonde haired, trendily bespectacled Miles was nevertheless a modest, charming young man displaying a genuine sense of humility, though obviously very bright and ambitious.

     A rumour went around that Miles himself had acquired a new car but he refused to talk about it when asked. As a senior board director, Michael parked his car in the agency’s basement car park, and would sometimes wave to the group of us as we stood outside the Coach and Horses, the agency local, of an evening, as he swept past. On one such occasion, someone said to Miles as the black 2002 disappeared out of sight,
     “I saw you getting into a really nice motor the other evening. It looked like a BM 2002 just like Michael’s? Lovely metallic green colour, I must say. Why do you park it so far from the agency?”
     Miles almost choked on his beer, “Bugger!”
     “What’s up,” said the car spotter, “It is yours isn’t it?”
     “Yes,” confessed Miles, “but it’s all a bit embarrassing really.”
     “Why’s that? I would’ve thought anyone would be really chuffed at having a BM like Michael’s.”
     “That’s just it. It isn’t like Michael’s at all. It is a 2002, but it’s the tii – a lot further up the scale than Michael’s.”
     “So what’s the problem?”
     “The tii is a lot more expensive than the 2002. It’s got better suspension and wheels, a bespoke steering wheel, an overhead camshaft, and is fuel injected. Michael’2002 is 90 BHP but the tii is 130 and one fuck of a sight faster. D’you fancy another pint?”

* * * * * * *

TURNUPS.

Being the multi national agency JWT was, back in the 1970s, staff members seemed free to spend time in other J. Walter Thompson offices around the world other than their own. 24 years old Art director, Tateo Kobayashi, from Tokyo, turned up on the doorstep of 40 Berkeley Square one spring morning in 1972 and was placed in the office I shared with Richard Barker, and another writer, David Wixey, largely, I think, because the London office management weren’t quite sure to do with this charming, smiley, bespectabled, serial bowing, sudden and unannounced arrival.

     Tateo was very keen to join in and Richard and I gave him a packaging brief we’d been working on. He got stuck in straight away, enthusiastically producing some very good, well thought out ideas. He also displayed a keen sense of humour, which was handy as the atmosphere in our office bordered on the lunatic. We’d been working on the launch of a new hot chocolate type product, Mid Night, for Beechams, the originators of Horlicks and Lucozade. The accompanying slogan Richard wrote was ‘Rich and Darker’. Tateo thought this hilarious, spotting straight away that Rich and Darker sounded like Richard Barker, and decided, in his wickedness, they were one and the same thing. He would snap to attention and bow whenever Richard entered the room, greeting him thusly:
     “Oooragh. It’s lich and darker,” grinning all over his chops. There were 3 things Tateo was determined to accomplish during his stay in England, “I must go to see car wacing. I must see the frilm, Dirty Hally, (his pronounciation of the then new Clint Eastwood movie) as it is not possible to see it in Japan. I must have Engrish grirl.” (This despite often speaking fondly of his wife, Kako, and their newborn son back in Tokyo.) He managed all 3.

     I took him to a 6 hour, 500km sports car event at Brands Hatch, during which, despite the event being one of the loudest sports car races ever run, due largely to the 2 screaming 12 cylinder, French Matra cars that came first and second in the race, Tateo fell asleep. He went to see Dirty Harry with group head, Morris Twose’s, PA, Angela, apparently enjoying the film and Angela very soon afterwards.

     ‘Pommie Bastards’, ‘Chunder’, ‘No Poofters’, were some of the familiar terms used by Barry Humphries’ infamous cartoon character, Barry McKenzie, in Private Eye during the 1970s. A very funny piss-take of Brits and Aussie stereotypes, Barry McKenzie, like Tateo, turned up in person on the doorstep of 40 Berkeley Square one day, also like Tateo, unannounced. The actual person was one John Whoite (White), fresh from the JWT Sydney office. Like Barry, John was a tall, friendly, young man with a loud Aussie voice, his blue suit trousers shying away from his light brown shoes by a several inches, his Aussie expressions coming thick and fast.
     “Don’t come the raw prawn,” meant don’t be naïve.
     “Fair suck of the source bottle,” meant you’ve had your say, let me have mine.
     “My shout,” meant my round, which at the time had never been heard before, but became quite common.
     John was a likeable, gregarious man and fitted most people’s idea of what Australian ‘blokes’ were like, much to the consternation of Geelong Grammar School educated, Rob Wilson, a JWT, 7th floor account director, who’d spent quite a few years in the UK trying to educate people away from this stereotypical notion of the Australian male and doing his utmost to appear the absolute opposite in terms of culture, grooming and general demeanour. It’s fair to say that Rob was visibly relieved when John White returned to Sydney, having introduced many in the agency to the delights of Fosters, Four X and Swan lagers, his own view of the world in spades, not to mention his sense of humour, blue.



* * * * * * *

CHAPTER 14. JEREMY.


In the summertime when the weather's high,
you can stretch right up and touch the sky,
when the weather's fine,
you got women, you got women on your mind.

Have a drink, have a drive,
go out and see what you can find.

If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal.
If her daddy's poor, just do as you feel.
Speed along the lane,
Do a ton, or a ton and twenty-five.
When the sun goes down, you can make it,
make it good in a lay-by.

We're not grey people, we're not dirty, we're not mean.
We love everybody, but we do as we think.
When the weather's fine we go fishing or go swimming in the sea.
We're always happy,
life's for living, yeah, that's our philosophy.

Sing along with us, dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
Da-da-da-da-da...Yeah, we're happy happy,
da-da-da-da-dah.

When the winter's here, then it's party time.
Bring a bottle, wear your bright clothes.
It'll soon be summertime, and we'll sing again,
we'll go drivin' or maybe we'll settle down.
If she's rich, if she's nice,
bring you're friends and we'll all go into town.

Someone once said, “When Jeremy Bullmore speaks, the world listens.” I’d go along with that. In 1966, there were three creative floors in JWT London: the second, the third and the fifth, each comprising of at least 2 creative groups. The second floor was considered the best because it was where Jeremy Bullmore, the agency’s creative director, resided and ran the creative group at the front of the building. Everything connected with Jeremy Bullmore, was considered to be on a different level to the norm. His name often cropped up in conversation and it soon became clear that whomever this mystical person was, he was highly respected, revered, even possibly feared in some way. I never heard anything said against him and it was obvious that, like him or not, Jeremy Bullmore was a force to be reckoned with and that if any one person could be considered to be at the heart, or indeed, WAS the heart of the agency, it was Jeremy Bullmore.
     Passing comments were as so:
     “I wonder what Jeremy Bullmore would think of that.”
     “Maybe we should ask Jeremy Bullmore.”
     “I wouldn’t let Jeremy Bullmore see that, if I were you.”
     It was very interesting to hear what Jeremy Bullmore had to say on the subject the other day.”
     During my 4 months at the agency as a student in ’66, I was billeted on the 3rd floor, but Howard Cue, a young art director from Ealing art college, hired while I was there, was added to the Bullmore group as art director, Peter Rigby’s, assistant and I used to pop down and visit him from time to time. Jeremy Bullmore’s office was next to Peter and Howard’s and the door always closed. These were still the days before creative teams, art director and writer, were encouraged to work together and art directors had separate offices to writers.

     Peter was a lovely bloke but a bit of an automaton – a layout factory, working through and interpreting a pile of headlines and copy every day, as was the practice for most art directors in the agency in those days, in some cases, the copy being delivered to the art director by a secretary. Rarely, it seemed, did the writers and art directors discuss the proposed advertising, the brief going straight to the copywriter who’d come up with a solution and hand it on to what felt to me to be their slaves.

     I was talking to Mike Dowd, an art director from L.A., in his office one day when a senior lady copywriter delivered her solution to a brief from the Cheese Council.
     “I’ve got it, Mike,” she said full of excitement, “’Cheese is fascinating!’”

     Mike studied the desktop for a couple of seconds before responding, “Yeah, baby. I can sit and stare at it for hours.”

     But the times they were a-changing, especially amongst the younger members of staff, art directors and copywriters alike. As an art director, to sit down with a copywriter and chew over a brief was a magical experience and vice versa. There was an excitement, a sense of fun, a rush of adrenalin in anticipation of what may be round the corner in terms of a great idea or concept. Two heads are always better than one, and from two heads would always come a solution that was greater. One person in the pair would have a thought and, inspired, the other would suggest a slightly different way forward and the excitement would grow along with the idea until both partners would come to know and agree they had a great solution spontaneously. It was easy to see that this was a great way to work.

     There was nothing like the feeling you both got when you knew you’d cracked a problem. It was all smiles. You felt elated, high as a kite. In the minds of most creative teams, this was a hell of a great way to earn a living. And how.

     In the Jeremy Bullmore group, passion flowed along with ambition, no doubt inspired by Jeremy himself. But not everyone was up to speed and competition was fierce. People were impatient to get on and do well, which may explain why Howard and copywriter, Allen Thomas came to blows – literally. Peter and Howard found themselves under the usual pressure of trying to do too much in not enough time and the factory was in full swing when Thomas entered the room and demanded some layouts for stuff he’d written and when told he’d have to wait a while proceeded to berate Peter Rigby unmercifully. The loyal Howard snapped and asked Mr. Thomas a quite significant question:
     “Who do you think you are? Fucking God?”

     Allen T, obviously found Howard’s comments a tad on the unsubtle side and proceeded to grab Howard’s shirt front, ripping the buttons off. Both men were big but in different ways, Thomas, resembling actor, Sydney Greenstreet, in terms of shape and bulk, Howard being taller, wiry, but a big bugger nevertheless. The ensuing scrap lasted just long enough for Howard’s right fist to deliver a steam hammer like blow to Allen’s left eye and a proposition to his foe:
     “If you ever touch me again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

     Following the scrap, Allen wore a purple eye patch with a certain amount of panache, but for the remainder of their time at the agency, the two men avoided one another and if confronted, according to Howard, they both smiled politely but said nothing. When I rejoined the agency, both were members of different creative groups, Allen in Bob Judd’s outfit on the fifth floor and Howard a member of Larry Carter’s team on the third. Carter was the new JWT London head of art, though Harold George, approaching retirement, was still a member of staff. Carter, who had been a tutor in the graphic design department at the Royal College of Art, and I, never really saw eye to eye and I always thought he was suspicious of my reasons for leaving the College. Whatever, his group was tasked at the time with pitching for the Guiness account, which they did successfully. I didn’t think the work they did was that great but the gain was nevertheless a huge feather in JWT’s cap not to mention Carter’s.

     By this time, Jeremy Bullmore was no longer a creative group head having become Executive Creative Director and Vice Chairman of JWT, London. His name was still banded about but it was now: ‘Jeremy this or Jeremy that’. The Bullmore part had been left off. Maybe he’d become friendly, more approachable. Maybe he wasn’t so scary after all. Maybe his reputation was just a myth. I was curious, though I still hadn’t laid eyes on him, let alone met him. It wasn’t long before my curiosity was satisfied.

     The brand that brought Richard Barker and I together was Oxo. Unlike most large, busy accounts, Oxo didn’t belong to a particular creative group but was overseen by Richard’s immediate superior, copywriter, Gill Firth and Jeremy Bullmore. Lawrence Hutchins, whom I worked for as his assistant, was senior art director and producer on the Oxo account so Lawrence suggested that I work with Richard directly on a few projects, a suggestion he was to regret.

     Richard and Lawrence didn’t get on, mainly because Lawrence had boasted that now he was senior art director on Oxo and was also responsible for producing the on-going Katie and Philip TV commercials, he was really pleased to have so much of the agency’s important business under his belt, a notion Richard resented as he’d kept the series going by writing the K&P scripts since he’d been at the agency. The two had several rows, Richard complained to Jill, who, not knowing how to resolve the situation, asked Jeremy to intervene. The four had a meeting in Jeremy’s office and Jeremy, who’s skill as a staff diplomat was as legendary as all his other attributes, smoothed things over. I wasn’t in the meeting but was passing when they came out and it was smiles all round. Everything was to proceed as normal. Lawrence was still the producer on the account, and Richard the writer under Jill’s supervision. Being not only in charge of the agency’s creative department and in charge of the Oxo account, Jeremy could have told them all to shut up and get on with it but he was much cleverer than that.

     Lawrence agreed to me continuing working with Richard provided I showed him the work so we got on with it. Officially, Richard and I belonged on different creative floors and we didn’t have a room to work in apart from Richard’s tiny cubbyhole, or coffin, as he called it, on the 3rd floor. One day we found an empty room in a side corridor on the third floor so we just moved in. We even found some paint and gave the place a fresh coat. Thus Richard Barker and I became the first unofficial creative team in JWT London, because the partnership hadn’t been sanctioned anyone other than ourselves. In fact, apart from Allen Thomas and John ST Claire, (Roger Nights and Max Henry in group 8, were a separate entity) the notion of creative teams was discouraged, probably because it was thought such teams would become too strong as in the case of Allen and John. So Richard and I didn’t ask permission because we knew we’d be turned down. We just got on with it.

     I’d been at agency for the second time for about a year and my reputation was in tatters due largely to VT who’d tried to get me fired because, as I mentioned ealier, she accused me of fucking up the piece of crap she wrote on the Melody hair care piece of business. Lawrence, a close friend of hers, had been too busy doing his producer thing to help sort out the shit that was obviously about to hit the fan, was nonetheless loyal to me throughout, though by then I was certain the assistant art director thing just didn’t work as I was constantly trying to think through someone else’s eyes. Richard and I agreed that we had to do things our own way, or not at all. We had to be in control of our own destiny for better or worse and we decided it was now a case of do or die.

     Working on Oxo full time, I was present at meetings in Jeremy Bullmore’s office. I’d guess he was in his late 30s, slightly thinning on top, always in a button down shirt, the sleeves folded to the forearms, collar undone, tie hanging loose, shoes in the casual, American penny loafer style. He wore what looked like tortoiseshell, National Health glasses, and sat deeply in his armchair, head back, legs outstretched, arms hanging limply over the chair sides, eyes fixed and gazing through the clouds of blue cigarette smoke above. He’d listen patiently to what was being said then, in a quiet, relaxed manner give his opinion and steer the meeting towards the right place, succinctly, exactly. Apart from knowing instinctively that Jeremy was right, you always came away from a meeting with him feeling you’d learned something, and even if you weren’t sure what, it would eventually dawn in a later moment of revelation.

     Not everyone agreed with Jeremy but it could be cringe-making when someone, usually a rep, put forward a contrary point of view. Jeremy would explain his position again in a slightly stiffer tone and if the questioner still wasn’t convinced, would quite politely inform the protagonist that his way was the way it was going to be. He never shouted or got emotional but his voice became more clipped, his teeth somehow tighter, the voice actually quieter. Then he’d stand up and leave the room, which had usually fallen silent.

     I’ve been shouted or screamed at a few times over the years and it’s something I don’t respond well to and I usually erupt myself making the situation worse. I just don’t think anyone has ever earned the right to yell at me. Jeremy didn’t need to shout. In his cool, calm, collected way, he was much more scary. He would sometimes address gatherings of the JWT staff in the basement presentation theatre, maybe when there was some important news to announce like when the agency had won an important piece of business. He was always witty, in an almost self-depreciating way, an often hilarious, a purely brilliant, natural public speaker. Apparently this didn’t come easily, and he was known to throw up in the loo before a presentation and I’d seen him steady himself with a glass of scotch while standing at the urinal.

     In 1969, Richard and I produced a poster selling the notion of Oxo as a family drink. What we did was simple. It was a close up picture of an 8 years old boy drinking from a mug, shot by John Knill, the steam engendered by cigarette smoke, something you wouldn’t get away with these days. There was no headline, just a strategically placed tiny red square containing the Oxo logo. It wasn’t brilliant, but arguably effective, and enough to win a British Poster Award. David Bernstein, the American creative director of the Creative Business, a Soho based agency, who MC’d the awards ceremony, said he thought the positioning of the ‘cube’ logo was 'cavalier', whatever that meant. I thought I was an art director, not some flash bastard with a skinny sword, too much hair and makeup riding a carthorse.

     Jeremy had once said that a creative person is only as good as the last idea they’d had. This was a scary realization for any creative person and could lead them to fall into the trap of attacking a problem like a mongoose going for a python’s jugular, fear of failure being the main motivation. This technique can work and an idea can, under pressure, suddenly reveal itself, but you need bags of tenacity, strength, staying power, and kamikaze resolve. Chasing an idea is a bit like letting a dog off a lead and it running away. The more you chase it, the further and faster it goes away from you. The only way to get the dog to come back is to turn around and walk in the opposite direction. Pretty soon, it’ll be trotting at your side. It can best to walk away from a blank sheet of paper that you haven’t managed to make a relevant mark on, and do something else. Play the idea at it’s own game. Deny it. Pretend you don’t care, and sometimes, it will spring at you when you least expect it like a spoilt child trying to regain your attention.

     Ideas are wicked entities. Sometimes, they play games with your sanity. They’ll tease and provoke you when you feel their presence then disappear completely leaving you feeling lost and empty. This happened to Richard and I in 1969 when the time came round for us to produce another Oxo drinks poster. We couldn’t. We didn’t have a clue. It wasn’t a difficult brief and we’d had a few wild thoughts but nothing was right. Whatever big idea there was, must have been dancing around in shadows of our minds dropping its pants and showing us its bum. We tried for just over a week but got nowhere and the idea of asking someone else to have a go was out of the question. We weren’t attached to a group and Oxo was the only account we had. We had to do the job ourselves. On the morning, Dennis Power, the senior rep on the Oxo account was due to travel to Croydon to present the poster, we still hadn’t solved it. I was busy putting together a half-baked idea, which was so average, I can’t remember the contents, (I’m lying. So what?)

     Dennis was furious and went off to Croydon empty handed. Richard, in his wisdom, decided the poster was really a ‘visual’ problem, and that he could no longer help, which was a bit of a blow, but not so much of a punch in the guts as his next suggestion. He said he thought I ought to take the problem to Jeremy Bullmore.
     “Jesus Christ!” I thought. But he wasn’t present at JWT. At least, I didn’t think he was.


M.P. “Good evening ladies and gentleman. This is Michael Park’n’ride welcoming you to another scintillating evening of patronizing chat and verbal argy - bargy from yours truly aimed at a victim of my choice. Tonight’s guest is most famous for causing the deaths of over 20 million people between 1936 and 1945 amongst loads of other pretty tacky stuff so please put your hands together and welcome the man often known as Mein Fuhrer, the one and only, Adolf Hitler.” SFX: applause.
     M.P. “Welcome, Adolf – you don’t mind if I can you Adolf? I must say it’s a real privilege and pleasure to have you on the show. Forgive me for not shoving my arm out like all you Nazis used to, but it’s not allowed these days, what with all this confounded PC stuff and all. I must say you’re looking pretty good considering. The old moustache is a bit singed but the bullet hole is healing well. How’s Eva doing? Is she a zombie, too?
     “Well. Let’s get straight down to it. There’s one question I’ve always wanted to ask you, given the opportunity, so here goes. Why the hell did you attack the Ruskies when you did? I mean, everybody knows their winter weather can freeze the balls off a brass elephant at 20 paces. I mean, you had it made in the West. You’d done France Belgium, Poland, Holland, Greece, Luxemburg, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Yugoslavia, not to mention Margate. You didn’t beat the good old UK though, did you, chum? All that old Luftwaffe stuff didn’t really work out, did it? Old Goering turned out to be a bit of vanker,didn't he?
     “The thing is, Adolf, old chum, we had something you krauts didn’t. We had Winnie the Pooh, and what with his, ‘we shall fart in our britches’ and ‘we will never meander’, you didn’t stand a bloody chance, did you? You all right, Adolf? You’ve gone even greyer, if that’s possible and you’re shaking all over. Oops. His head’s fallen off and rolled across the studio…” SZX: groans, people throwing up etc.
     “We’ll that just about brings us to the end of the show. Next week, my guest will be another of the world’s most notorious mass murderers, Tony Blaire. Nighty night.”


* * * * * * *


CHAPTER 15. CUBISM.

She ain't got no money

Her clothes are kinda funny

Her hair is kinda wild and free

Oh, but love grows where my Rosemary goes

And nobody knows like me

She talks kinda lazy

And people say she she's crazy

And her life's a mystery

Oh, but love grows where my Rosemary goes

And nobody knows like me
There's something about her hand holding mine

It's a feeling that's fine

And I just gotta say
She's really got a magical spell

And it's working so well

That I can't get away

I'm a lucky fella

And I've just got to tell her

That I love her endlessly

Because love grows where my
Rosemary goes

And nobody knows like me

There's something about her hand holding mine

It's a feeling that's fine

And I just gotta say

She's really got a magical spell

And it's working so well

That I can't get away

I'm a lucky fella

And I've just got to tell her

That I love her endlessly

Because love grows where my
Rosemary goes

And nobody knows like me
[Fadeout:]
It keeps growing every place she's been

And nobody knows like me

If you've met her, you'll never forget her

And nobody knows like me
La la la- believe it when you've seen it

Nobody knows like me

So here I was halfway through my second large Scotch in the Shakespeare’s Head, a splendid pub/tourist trap in Carnaby Street at 1.30 pm on a Wednesday afternoon. Two would be enough, as I didn’t wanted to be pissed for my 2.30 meeting with Jeremy Bullmore. I just needed a little Dutch courage. Besides, Jeremy was a Scotch supporter himself, so if it was all right with him, it was definitely an acceptably civilized liquid to be partaking of. I’d made my appointment the day before with Ann Page, Jeremy’s P.A. and guardian. She’d sat bolt upright at her typewriter as usual, at the front of the bay adjacent to his office behind the barrier desk, at one end of which was a gap just large enough for a single person to pass through and turn left into his office provided a visit had been sanctioned and officially arranged by her, and one’s immediate entrance allowed. It was as if there was an invisible lazar beam across the gap that would cut you in two should you be foolish enough try and cross without permission. Either that, or a well-aimed broadside from Ann’s notably pert and well-proportioned breasts would sink you without trace.

     Ann was pretty in an untouchable, Victorian governess kind of way, short, dark hair framing her pale features perfectly, elegantly. If Ann liked you, she’d be very helpful, and show a slight smile as she reached for the diary placed impeccably North East of the typewriter, the delicate tone of her voice, friendly, though not over familiar. If she didn’t like you, it was like communicating with the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
     “Hello, Neal. Go straight in. Jeremy’s waiting for you,” she said at exactly 1.30., that day without looking up. Jeremy was in his favourite armchair, his own arms dangling, shirtsleeves folded back, tie undone, cigarette protruding from the fingers of his right hand.
     “Hello, Neal. Take a seat and tell me what the problem is,” he said quietly, gesturing to the sofa next to him. I immediately felt relaxed and took him through where we’d been and where we were at with the Oxo drink poster. He listened, leaning back and gazing into the smoke above his head. He asked a few question.
     “I see. It’s tricky,” he said as Ann called through the open door.
     “I have Geoffrey Wainwright on line one, Jeremy,”
     “Just a sec,” he said, and went over to the desk by the window and lifted a telephone receiver to his ear. He stood with his back to me looking out across Berkeley Square,
     “Geoffrey. It’s Jeremy. I thought I told you that commercial wasn’t to run,” there was a pause, then, “I told you that film was not to run!” he said in a much more pinched manner before slamming the receiver down. I suddenly wished I’d had that third Scotch.
     “I think it would be a good thing for us to get together and try and solve the problem. Are you free tomorrow morning, Neal?” Jeremy said as he sank back into his chair.
     “Yes. Sure.” <
     “Ann, book Neal in for a couple of hours tomorrow morning, would you please?” he called to Ann, “It would be good if we weren’t disturbed.”
     “You’re booked in with Jeremy for 10.30 in the morning, Neal,” said Ann without looking up from her typing task as I left. Blimey! Was I dreaming, or was I really going to sit down with the mythical Jeremy Bullmore and work on a poster for Oxo? I pinched myself hard. Ouch! Yep, it looked like I was going to do just that.

     Since Oxo cubes were launched in 1910 they’d been regularly advertised as a tasty ingredient for a nourishing hot drink, the ‘drink’ concept needing frequent reinforcement as the main association of Oxo cubes was for use in making gravy. Whatever imagery was used in the Oxo drink advertising was crucial, and sensitively chosen, the notion of a straw in a full gravy boat not quite doing the job unless the task was to make consumers throw up.

     The proposition was simple – all you need to do is sprinkle two Oxo cubes into a mug of hot water and you had a delicious, hot, full of flavour nourishing drink, BUT DON’T WORRY IT - IT AIN’T GRAVY, ‘COS GRAVY HAS OTHER STUFF IN IT LIKE A LAYER OF ONION AND OTHER VEGITABLES AT THE BOTTOM AND FLOUR TO THICKEN IT. Hmmm. Jeremy was right. It was tricky to get this across quickly and easily. But I already knew that.

     It took Jeremy and I two days to come up with an answer. Almost more importantly, he seemed to really enjoy the process as much as I did. It was as if taking a break from the enourmous pressure of just being Jeremy Bullmore, revered and sought after captain of the great ship, JWT London, was a welcome relief. What’s more, I felt totally at ease and on an equal footing, just as if I was working with any other good copywriter.

     The door to his office was closed and there few interruptions. Save for a couple of queries from callers, which Ann needed to answer, no one got past the outer defences. The solution was simple, as most effective advertising ideas are. The visual was a line of 4 drinking mugs, the first being large, dark and heavy looking, the next, smaller, prettier, in rich colours, the two smaller mugs – one in little girl, pinkish colours, the other more brash in shades of blue suggesting the owner was as mall boy.

     The headline: ‘PUT SOME INTO THEM’. There was also a small red square containing the white Oxo logo. It could be said that it was entirely Jeremy’s idea, but though he voiced it, it arrived after about 3 hours trying several approaches. In any creative team, it doesn’t matter who voices the final solution, it’s a given that nothing would have arrived at all were it not for the constant mental wrestling of both parties. The idea belongs to both in equal measure.

     This is not an ideal world, however, and it must be said, there have been times when one member of what, on the surface, would appear to be an inseparable duo, gets pissed in the pub one night and confides to some girl, or bloke they started out chatting up and then tumbled into the drunken emotional phase, usually because they’re getting nowhere and have had one G&T too many.
     “He doesn’t really have a clue. I’ve been carrying him on my back for the past 4 years. I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s a lovely bloke and a real friend, but he’s never had an idea in is life. I come up with everything. I’m the driving force. If you ask me he spends too much time pissing about with typefaces and shit and worrying about which photographer to use. I mean, he’s a bloody good art director. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be working with him, would I? Without me, though, he’d be bloody nowhere, you know what I mean?”

     In this case, I was happy with the solution and so was a smiling Jeremy. I did a rough sketch of the poster and showed it to Richard Barker who also seemed to like the idea. We showed the layout to Dennis Power who was also smiling and we agreed to photograph the mugs, set the type and show the poster to the client as a finished item.

     I shot the picture with John Street, a flavour of the time still life photographer. There was no fag smoke this time, no moody lighting, just the mugs on a white background and the headline in bold, black type. The whole thing looked great, even if I say so myself. The client loved the poster but it never ran, because of budgetary constraints, but the agency had at least proved its creative capacity once more. Jeremy and I were both disappointed not seeing our ‘baby’ up on the hoardings, “Bugger!” being his response when I gave him the news, and then,
     “Never mind. Maybe next time.”

     I’d have killed for the chance to work with him again. Not because he was Jeremy Bullmore, because he was a bloody good creative partner and a brilliant writer.

K&P = MAN APPEAL

In October 1958, JWT launched the Katie and Philip Oxo TV commercials. It was the first British advertising soap opera and featured a fairly middle class, suburban housewife and her everyday task of being what she was born to be: a housewife, her most important job to shove enticing grub in front of her piggy husband like there was no tomorrow. Like most British TV ads at the time, the commercials were pretty corny. Commercials in those days were so cringe making, one decided at a very early age, never, ever to become part of the advertising business, and that if by chance, one found one’s self doing just that, one would lie like hell to one’s mates and deny all knowledge. The Oxo commercials usually began with Katie, our heroine, talking to camera, giving recipe ideas and cooking hints with flashback sequences of the food being prepared and stuffed in the oven, and ending with her greedy bugger of a hubby, knife and fork at the ready, making some inane comment about what was on the plate Katie had placed in front of him before plunging in gob first. Katie just smiled knowingly, almost winking at the audience and probably thinking: “Pratt!”

     As time went on, the Oxo Katie and Philip commercials became more sophisticated, as British advertising did in general, in line with audiences who became more demanding and competition between brands stronger. Katie no longer talked to camera, at least not in front of Philip. The storylines were stronger, the situations more realistic, directors with TV and film drama experience were hired. Brooke Bond Oxo even bought the couple a cottage in Northumberland near the seaside village of Alnmouth, which became the main location where the films were shot. By the time Richard Barker and I started working together, Richard was already established as the senior writer on the Oxo account, one of his responsibilities being to keep the K&P commercials (as they were known in the agency) not only alive and kicking, but refreshed and vibrant according to whatever relevant, fashionable trends were happening. At the beginning of

     In 1969, Richard had the task of coming up with 4 new scripts to be shot later that year and invited me to get involved. Officially, in the pre creative team JWT, at least, TV commercials were the remit of copywriters and not art directors, so I was delighted to be given the opportunity to work on TV scripts for the first time. Richard filled me in on the series’ history, how the characters and scenarios had developed, and the low-down on the actors involved and the parts they played to the point where Katie and Philip seemed totally real. (Well, of course they were real. Whatever made me think otherwise? Silly boy.) We had a huge amount of fun in the process, often collapsing on the floor in hysterical laughter.

     We came up with murder scenarios – Katie of Philip and vice-versa (a scene with Katie injecting something really nasty into an Oxo cube springs to mind, her voice over describing the most effective poisons to use to bump of your husband); Katie giving birth to a black baby; Philip turning gay then vegetarian… It was hilarious. Then mild panic set in, we got on with the job and came up with the 4 scripts, my favourite being when K&P, whom by this time had a young son, David, had gone to the cinema, while their meal for the evening, a sumptuous casserole, was simmering away in the oven, only to get home to find that the babysitter had gratefully scoffed the lot.

     The agency and client loved the scripts and, as an extra bonus, I was invited to go on the ten day shoot and Richard picked me up in his really hot little pea coloured Hillman Imp one Saturday morning and off we went to the windy wilds of Northumberland, pet. Lawrence was producer for the shoot along with his P.A., Cydney Powell.

     That’s Cydney, as in honey-blonde, 27 years old, Sloane Ranger type lady, traditional, Princess Ann type silk headscarf knotted beneath her chin, shiny tights and shoes with thin gold surrounds separating the soles from the uppers and who, despite her obvious upper middle class background and Sloane voice, C was fun company and a useful diplomatic mediator, keeping the cold war between Richard and Lawrence at bay during the shoot and ensuring that everything went smoothly. Cydney also possessed the most awesome, two pinkie- in-the-mouth, cab-hailing whistle I’d ever heard. She’d spot a yellow light at the other end of Berkeley Square and, looping her regulation, mega expensive Sloane handbag over the crook of her arm, step off the curb and proceed, piercingly, to penetrate the snooty depths of that particular part of Mayfair to the core. If that wasn’t style, what was?

     Cydney was very experienced and good at her job, having once been P.A. to the agency’s head of TV, Richard Comin. She know her stuff when it came to the best directors in town and once said to me of Ridley Scott, whom she’d worked with a couple of times, then making his name as the most exciting new director on the advertising scene, in all seriousness,
     “I think Ridley Scott’s a fantastic director. Mark my words, he’ll go a long way and I’d lay him if I thought I could.”

     This turned out to be a typically, female, intuitive, longsighted view, Ridley becoming one of the most acclaimed British film directors of all time and a great favourite of mine, though I must confess, I never wanted to lay him, even if I thought I could’ve.

     Having never been further North than York, and despite my girlfriend having been born in Corbridge, near Hexham, and technically a Geordie, Northumberland was a very pleasant shock with its rolling, rugged countryside, fairytale castles, and stunning white sand beaches, almost always deserted on account of the ever present chill wind. Often bright sunshine wrapped in a myriad of scudding clouds, and dancing, busy sparkles of reflected light across the surface made the North Sea wickedly enticing, the sea temperature capable of instantly freezing your foot off were you foolish enough to go paddling.

     Richard and I, Cydney and Lawrence and Director, Herbert Wise, were billeted in the Sun Castle Hotel, directly opposite Warkworth Castle, one of the locations, the rest, including the cast and crew, in various hotels in Alnwick and Alnmouth. The Austrian, Wise, (originally Weisz, which he may thought sounded a bit too Nazi for someone from the Fatherland wishing to settle in England…) seemed a dour, humourless individual, un-open to contributions from anyone else regarding the job in hand. Wise was a very accomplished TV and Film director before and since this particular K&P shoot, but his approach to directing was typically Germanic, ordered and pre-structured, almost in a military way and it occurred to me how well the infamous SS uniform of the Third Reich would have complimented his natural display of cold authority. Perhaps there had been a time when it had.

SWEETIES

Richard Barker and I also worked together on Smarties at JWT and produced an animated TV campaign with Richard Williams, famous amongst other things for carrying out all the animation for the film, ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, the main character being based on himself. No-one there had ever heard of him at JWT, but I remembered an article about him and his film, The Little Island, in one of the colour sups at Wharton Road, and a TV programme about him so I called his studio and asked him to come in to the agency.

     He was by far, one of the funniest, most charming people I've ever met, and his talent was incalculable. He was working on 'Scrooge' at the time and his big feature (last called 'The Mastic Thief' - the name kept changing) that was his life's work and that he was never to finish. I used to go to the end of day line tests. They were a lovely bunch of people - a real family with Dick at the head of the table. He imported animation talent from all over the world and I met Ken Harris, among others, who invented, drew and animated the Road Runner aka, Will E. Coyote. Ken was 80 by then and used to tell Dick to keep trying and that oneday he might make an animator. He wasn't joking.

     Dick told me he went to dinner with John Schiessinger and a dozen or so luminaries and that JS, sitting at the head of the table, was holding forth about the recent success of Midnight Cowboy. He asked Dick what he thought of the film and Dick told him he thought it was a fag's fantasy. He said JS was almost in tears at the thought of someone not liking his creation. Dick just shrugged, "He asked me what I thought, and I told him, It wasn't anything personal."

     As far as I know, Dick now teaches in a Canadian University. He was a great friends with Kenneth Williams who did a lot of voice overs for him, and whenever KW was at the studio, the pair of them would stand in Soho Square and take the piss out of passers by - mimicking the way they walked and so on. You had to be careful around Dick, as you could easily end up as a character in the feature, which was OK if he liked you, but not so good if he didn't, as he'd readily turn you into something really nasty.

PARTY ANIMALS

The annual JWT Christmas part always occurred at the end of January and always in a Park Lane hotel. It was usually a sit down banquet affair requiring formal dinner dress. I only went once in January 1971 when the formality was relaxed to a buffet job and lounge suits with ties acceptable. Copywriter, Roger Nights, turned up in a black suit with a high, shirt style collar, black, high heeled boots, bootlace tie and a gunbelt and holster complete with sixgun. The place was packed and most of the people I shared a table with were fidgety and more interested in drink than food. After an hour of speeches from board members, including the usually witty presentation from Jeremy Bullmore, the music started with a slow, dreamy number from the disco. Jeremy and Ann, his secretary took to floor, waltzed gently around couple of times then both left the proceedings, probably mindful of the mayhem that was to come. And come it did.

     The Equals, famous for their recent big hit, ‘Baby Come Back’, and led by singer, Eddie Grant, took to the stage and everyone went berserk. I spent the next couple of hours dancing with copywriter, Barbara Lines, by which time people were falling over each other or just falling over. Most of the evening remains a blur in my memory save for one particular incident that summed up the whole affair. Richard Dare, the agency head photographer, was standing on a round table amongst a heap of bottles and glasses, accompanied by a lady agency packaging designer, and the photographic studio receptionist, one arm around each of them. The trio tottered one way then another trying to keep their balance and failing abysmally. The table fell over pitching bottles, glasses and the drunken trio into the crowd. I decided it was time to leave.

     As I made for the cloakroom, I noticed a couple of senior JWT board directors, standing at the edge of the dance floor intently surveying the gyrating crowd as if they were looking for someone. They were, but not necessarily the same person. The next day a very pissed off American art director, Jim Marshall, who’d accompanied a creative secretary to the do, told me he was taken aside by one of the surveyors and instructed in no uncertain terms that Jim wouldn’t be seeing Sally home, but that he would. Jim didn’t say what the outcome was and I didn’t ask.

‘Malteasers. The Chocolates with the less fattening centres.’

Eric M: “‘Ullo, Ern. Er…what’s up you, look really glum?”
Ernie W: “Nothing. I’m fine.”
M: “You can’t fool me, Ern. I can see you’re not quite the ticket.”
W: “Just leave me alone, will you? I’ve told you, I’m fine.”
M: “If you say so, Ern. How about a quick song and dance to liven things up, eh?”
W: “I don’t feel like singing and the last thing I want to do in this life right now is dance, got it?”
M: “Alright, alright. Keep your hair on. You’re lucky to have some. I mean, at least you’ve got some, even if it is a funny shape. How d’you think I feel not having enough to keep my head warm? Eh? Tell me that.”
W: “Just shut up, will you?”
M: “That’s charming, that is, I must say. Here I am trying to cheer you up and this is the thanks I get.”
W: “The trouble is you’re just not very good at it.”
M: “What?”
W: “Cheering people up.”
M: “Are you ‘avin’ a laugh?”
W: “Does it look like it?”
M: “I’ve done pretty well so far. If it hadn’t been for me, you’d still be on the funny scrap heap where I found you all those years ago.”
W: “Don’t make me laugh! Not that you ever have.”
M: “You what? I know more jokes and cracking up stories that you’ve had hot dinners.”
W: “Oh, really! Tell me one now. Go on make me laugh. Make me smile. Make me crack my face.”
M: “Alright. OK. I will. There was this bloke, see. And he had 7 heads - one for each day of the week. And they all had names…”
W: “Yeah I, know. Monday to Sunday.”
M: “’ow d’you know that?”
W: “Because I’ve heard it before.”
M: “But you can’t have. I’ve just made it up.”
W: “How come I know the punch line if you’ve just made it up?”
M: “What is it, then?”
W: “Sunday says to Wednesday: ‘Tuesday’s head is full of crap. I’m not gay, so take that back.’”
M: “That’s amazing. You must have read my mind.”
W: “Eric, the bloody joke’s as old as the hills and then some.”
M: “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
W: “Yes, you probably are.”
SFX: Long silence.
M: “Fancy a banana?”
W: “Yeah. Go on then."



* * * * * * *



CHAPTER 15. WOBBLYWOOD.

Keep on runnin’
Keep on hidin’
One fine day I’m gonna be the one
To make you understand
Oh yeah
I’m gonna be your man
Hey hey hey
Everyone is talkin’ about me
Makes me feel so bad
Hey hey hey
Everyone is laughing at me
Makes me feel so sad
Keep on runnin’
Hey hey
All right!
Keep on runnin’
Runnin’ from my arms
One fine day I’m gonna be the one
To make you understand
Oh yeah
I’m gonna be your man

Hey hey hey
Everyone is talkin’ about me
Makes me feel so sad
Hey hey hey
Everyone is laughin’ at me
Makes me feel so bad

Keep on runnin’
Runnin’ from my arms
One fine day I’m gonna be the one
To make you understand
Oh yeah, I’m gonna be your man

Mary Holland, the actress who played Katie, seemed pleasant and friendly, when I was introduced to her, and so was Peter Moynihan, who played Philip. The first day of the shoot was spent touring the locations at a leisurely stroll, Mary Holland chatting with Lawrence, Wise, and lighting cameraman, Jack Hildyard, who’d lit Bridge On The River Kwai. (That doesn’t mean he blew it up.) Jack was a really nice, friendly sort of bloke but it did occur to me that though Alnmouth was probably prettier to look at and less sweaty than a Sri Lankan jungle, a K&P commercial was a bit of a comedown even if the rumour that Alec Guiness was to appear as an extra was true.

     Wise insisted, rightly, on using top people in his crew. Jack didn’t seem to do a lot, mind. He’d stand with his hands in his pockets on shoot days when all around were rushing about, Jack occasionally looking up at the sky through some kind of folding eyeglass, checking his watch and yelling,
     “Two minutes!”

     I thought that for inside shots he’d have to work a bit harder. Not so. He had assistants - lots of them. There was ‘best boy’ (at which the mind boggled) who was actually the lead electrician in charge of the army of other electricians. Then there was the actual electrician, aka, the ‘juicer’, who shifted all the cables and lighting equipment about, under instruction from the best boy. Next up was the ‘gaffer’, whose job was to organize the lighting plan, work out the position of the lights and inform someone called ‘the key grip’ whose job was to physically organize the positioning of all the filming equipment including the lights, but he handed the actual positioning of lighting effects to someone called just plain ‘grip’. And that was only the beginning.

     There was the art director or production designer, set decorator, set dresser, costume designer, costume assistant, hair and make up persons, set builder, carpenter, props man, prop man’s assistant, stills photographer, boom operator for sound, sound mixer, unit driver, unit driver’s mate, 1st assistant director, 2nd assistant director, the director, the production company producer, 1st assistant camera, 2nd assistant camera, not to mention, the caterers, without whom, nothing would have happened at all.

     In those days, film production like the print industry, was run by powerful unions. A director would choose his own immediate crew, including the first assistant, the lighting cameraman and camera operator and not worry too much about the rest. There was no point. He just had to put up with whomever the union decided was to be on the shoot. If a props man was chosen by a production company, the union may have insisted that the props man needed an assistant and would recommend someone, and that someone would insist on, say, a carpenter mate of his also being hired and that carpenter would maybe insist on having an assistant and so on. Consequently, there would generally be twice the number of people on the set than was necessary, half of whom didn’t seem to do much other than sit or stand around drinking tea and reading a newspaper and/or scratching themselves as the average sloth might have, if awake.

     Union rules were stringent and unforgiving. On the first day of shooting scenes inside the K&P cottage, the place was packed to the walls. I was standing just behind the camera with my trusty Pentax camera raised at the ready when ‘turn over’ and ‘action’ were called. The old S1A Pentax had a particularly loud shutter and immediately the ‘clack’ split the air, a great big guy standing next to me turned round and screamed ‘cut!’ at the top of his lungs and everything stopped.
     “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.
     “It’s alright,” said Lawrence, stepping forward, “Neal is the agency art director.”

     “I don’t give a shit who his is,” said my new found chum, “What’s he doing using a camera when we’re filming? He ‘ain’t the stills man, ‘cos that’s Kenny, Alby’s brother-in-law, Geoff’s cousin an’ Dave’s ‘alf brother. ‘Ave you got a union ticket?” he sneered, obviously knowing I didn’t even have a bus ticket. I shook my head nervously, “Right. That’s it. Everybody out!” he shouted in the tone of the Arthur Scargil stand-in he was.

     I couldn’t believe my eyes. Apart from the director and a few key people, including the agency bods, the whole crew left the cottage and went into the garden. It was an hour before they were persuaded back again after Lawrence pleaded in my defense that the agency had commissioned me to take pictures of the shoot in progress for their archives. In a quiet aside, Lawrence explained the problem.
     “Sorry, matey. I should have explained that you can’t take still pictures when the camera’s turning over,” and, raising his eyeballs to the ceiling, “It’s not always quite as police state oriented as this, but our first assistant is obviously a fully paid up member of the Communist party answering only to Mr. Kruschev. It really pisses me off.”

     I wondered if this sort of thing had occurred on the River Kwai set and I instinctively looked over at Jack Hildyard who was leaning, arms folded, against the wall on the other side of the room. He grinned and shot me a wink. Something most probably had occurred in, across or near the famous river during the Kwai shoot, but was considered to be all in a day’s work, even if someone had drowned. I felt better.

     The next day Richard and I couldn’t even get into the cottage, it was so crowded. The air seemed full of the invisible forked lightning type of tension. It was deathly quiet, the only audible noise coming from Groupen Fuhrer Wise, in obvious immovable disagreement with Lawrence. The rest were probably hung over. On the first evening after our arrival, Richard and I had visited The Schooner, the largest and noisiest pub/hotel in Alnmouth, with the rest of the cast and crew. It was OK to begin with but the booze flowed faster than the Tyne, the noise of drunken revelry growing to recordable decibel levels and pretty soon, most of the company were several sheets to the breaking wind and beyond. We left early and went back to the hotel.

     Night by night, Richard and I avoided like the Black Death. They went on till dawn and there were stories of rows, tears, broken furniture, broken windows, broken noses, pillage, rape and murder. That’s probably a bit of an overall exaggeration, except for the rape and murder and the catering van getting rolled into a ditch at 4 in the morning, this being the most serious incident. Believe me, if there are no bacon rolls available in the early hours of a film shoot, there is no film shoot, end of, as they say in every ghastly episode of the TV series, East Enders.

BOB CROW

The tension at the cottage mounted further every day, and after one early morning visit, Richard and I, frustrated at not being able to get onto the set, decided to take off somewhere in the pea – sorry, I mean Imp. We headed North far into Deliverance country in an attempt to escape a shoot fast becoming a nightmare. We suddenly found ourselves on a single lane, deserted road in what felt like the middle of nowhere. We drove on in silence till, over the brow of a hill, we were confronted by the most amazing somewhere. Before us, was a vast stretch of flat land stretching to the edge of the world, save for what looked like snow-capped mountains in the distance.

     This was actually Otterburn Moor, in the very North of Northumberland close to the Scottish border and commandeered by the Ministry of Defence for target practice and tank exercises. The colours of the landscape were rich and stunning – purples, browns, blues, greens in sweeping abundance. Within this incredible vista was a strange sense of forbidding loneliness, which Richard and I both felt simultaneously. The distant mountains were the Cheviot Hills, enhancing the surroundings with their dominant, majestic spleandour and power. These were not just dead slabs of rock but living beings. They were watching us as we were watching them and seemed to beckon us further forward, if we dared. However, we were both cowards.

     Richard slowed the car to a crawl when out of the deep grass that flanked the road, flew a giant, black crow attempting a slow, lumbering, jumbo-jet style, take off. It flew from left to right in front of us but slumped beneath the Imp’s bonnet. Richard hit the breaks, too late. The bird went under the car. We both got out and looked back to see the crow struggling and fluttering on the road in obvious distress. I don’t know what we thought we were going to do, but without a word, we approached the struggling animal with some vague intention of trying to help it in some way. In panic, it managed to heave itself back into the grass on its belly, clearly unable to fly.

     The crow moved quite swiftly across the surface of the long grass before disappearing from sight re-immerging some distance away, still moving. We gave up any idea of giving chase leaving the unfortunate creature to become an easy lunch for some predator or other. For a while, we stood and stared into the foreboding panorama before getting back into the car, turning round and driving away. The whole incident had been remarkably eerie, like a scene from a Stephen King novel and, on the way back to the cottage, Richard, trying unsuccessfully to sound cynical, mentioned that he hoped it wasn’t some kind of omen of worse things to come. It was.

FLYING FOR THE GREAT LITTLE CUBE

The Northumberland Oxo film shoot wasn’t my first film shoot but the third. When I rejoined JWT in 1968, I went with Lawrence on a shoot for an experimental beer commercial directed by none other than Ridley Scott. He did all his own camera operating and came across as a pretty tough individual. One of the scenes involved a crowd supposed to at a local footy match. The crew was setting up a long shot as I stood nervously near the charismatic Mr. Scott and his band of brothers. One of the extras, a Freddie Garrity/Buddy Holly cross lookalike, with obvious comedic delusions, was boring the rest of the cast rigid with his antics, leaping about and shouting like a demented string puppet. Ridley, kneeling next to the camera perched on a tiny railway track, without taking his eye away from the viewfinder, addressed the first assistant,
     “Go and tell Freddie and the Dreamers to keep still and shut his fucking gob or I’ll shut it for him.”

     Enough said.

     I’d also spent a day on set for another experimental commercial, which was to be tested as a possible replacement series for Katie and Philip in case their popularity vanished overnight or they were killed in some freak accident or they got signed up by Bisto, in which case, they would have very properly been assassinated. Richard, whom I hadn’t even met, had been tasked to come up with the alternative, which he did beautifully. His line was ‘The Great Little Cube’ for which he also wrote a charming ditty:

The Great Little Cube, The red one for beef, The golden for chicken, The flavour, The savour, Wrapped in a cube, The Great Little Cube.



     The film featured a long table in the open air at which sat a lot of people of varying ages and character indulging in the biggest Sunday lunch banquet you could imagine. The camera roved amongst them and over the food while the song was played. There was lots of gravy pouring going on and smiling faces, and there was a risk that the films could be a bit cheesy – even vomit-inducing - but they were far from it, the whole thing stylishly directed and beautifully edited by the bearded American director, Lear Levin, the song, an absolute cracker, ideally complimenting the action.

     The Great Little Cube films never replaced K&P, who were still ahead in research, and I remember some people working on the account, and maybe even the client, being a little disappointed. Later, however, we ran a successful colour press version of the GLC campaign as double page spreads in women’s magazines. We’d photographed the first press ad – an outside wedding reception feast – twice before we went to Northumberland, once as a rough shot with Peter Webb, and the final shot with Lawrence’s friend, John Green. I think Peter’s shot had more style but we couldn’t use it as some of the food was faked up for the camera, something that even then, you couldn’t get away with. In final film or photography all food had to be real, and edible. That’s not to say John’s picture wasn’t good – it was, and fun to do, shot on location in the garden of a stately home.

     It was a big cast, and because the budget was tight, we used a few friends and relatives in the picture. My girlfriend was a bridesmaid and the sister of Rory McGrath, one of the JWT, 7th floor elite, was the bride. On the Friday before leaving for Northumberland, I submitted traces and transparencies to the typography department as the publication closing dates were close and the ads would have to ‘put to bed’ (sophisticated advertising/print terminology) while we were away. In my excited anticipation of the trip, I maybe hadn’t paid as much attention to the job as I should have, and when Richard and I got back to the cottage after our crow encounter, word had come through from the agency that there had indeed been a fuck up and that I had to return to Berkeley Square.

     Richard decided to go, too, feeling professionally that as he was the other half of the responsible creative team he’d better make sure I didn’t fuck up again. We flew to Heathrow from Newcastle and arrived in London late on a sunny afternoon. I’d never flown before and had never intended to on account of my extreme fear of heights. There was no time to voice any kind of protest and opt for a slow train as I did a couple of years later from another experimental shoot in Glassgow. This was a set of still photographs for another proposed alternative to K&P. The pictures were of a man and his two sons returning home to their cottage after a day’s climbing in the Scottish hills to the welcome of an Oxo based feast prepared by their loving wife and or mother who opened the front door on their return with visible emotion as if the trio had returned from years abroad fighting a war.

     The stills were filmed on a rostrum camera and set to romantic music and a charming rhyme about the magical properties of the famous cube, written by Richard and I, which was so enchantingly rendered I can’t remember a single bloody word. I didn’t fuck up this time. I shot the pictures with Tony Copeland, a charming, Viva Zaparta moustached man in his 40s, the cultured hair on his upper lip set off beautifully by his pale yellow, snakeskin jacket. I worked one step ahead of him, a technique I later employed to great effect, setting up each shot to the best of my ability and leaving nothing to chance.

     We’d flown to Glasgow on the same kind 3 tail-engined Trident Richard and I had flown from Newcastle on. I was scared stiff and decided I was never going to fly again and took a train from Glassgow to London on the last Friday evening, Tony and his assistant flying back the next day. In the taxi on the way to the airport, the model who’d played the climbing Dad on the shoot, announced whistfully, that the infirmeries would be busy that night, explaining that they always were on pay day in Glassgow, many people taking out their whisky-fueled frustration at the depravity of tenement life in the infamous city on each other in no uncertain terms. As the cab pulled into the station square, it seemed as if a riot was erupting. People were screaming at the tops of their voices; scuffles rife; punches and kicks abounding, blood visible on several faces. I wished now I’d risked the Trident flight instead. As I picked my way through the swaying throng accompanied by Tony, I noticed there was not one policeman anywhere to be seen but I didn’t blame the Glassgow Constabulary one single jot.

     I was suddenly confronted by a very short man in a suit carrying a suitcase bigger than he was. Though apparently only 4 ft in actual stature, the chap was built like the proverbial BSH. He had no neck to speak of, shoulders connected to notably couliflower ears, his thick trunk leaning precariously sideways, the sideboard-sized brown leather case raised defiantly no more than 2 inched above the ground by a stubbily short, oak-branch arm. He paused waveringly in front of me, trying to maintain his balance, wasp-chewing, bulldog features fixed in a painful looking grimace of determination, trying to display not one iota of weakness. He stepped forward, but the weight of the suitcase, propelled him totteringly sideways like a demented crab, his muscles no doubt well lubricated by an abundance of Glenfiddich. He vanished, sucked into the black hole of the crowd.

     Tony escorted me through the swaying mass into the station and onto the train. As he slammed to door behind me, I’d never felt so relieved in my life. Ironically, the suitcase man episode was recalled a few months later in the creative groups Richard and I had been seconded to along with the Brooke Bond Oxo account, the JWT management believing that it wasn’t quite the ticket that such a prestigious piece of business should seen to be practically owned buy just a single creative team.

     One Friday afternoon approaching Christmas, I was passing group head, Tim Farr’s, office when he came careering sideways through the office doorway at an angle of 45 degrees in the process of trying to pour yet another glass of claret into an already well used glass, an act he was able to complete successfully as his right shoulder struck the wall on the opposite side of the corridor, wedging him in place and miraculously steadying both bottle and glass. (If you’ll pardon the total misuse of Cockney Rhyming slang.) The demonic, burgundy-faced grin of triumph on Mr. Farr’s face was distinctly reminiscent of that displayed by Baron Frankenstein the moment his infamous creation first showed signs of life.

     On arrival at Berkeley Square from Newcastle, Richard and I worked all night and most of the next day putting things right and, after a meeting with John Green at his Kensington studio to brief him on the next Great Little Cube press shot, we made our weary way back to the airport. The previous sunny day, magnificently highlighting the view of Parliament and the Thames as we flew into land 24 hours before, was gone replaced by black clouds and forked lightening fresh from Hell. The flight back to Newcastle was a nightmare with both Richard and I staring white knuckled into our laps, hurried fragments of our past lives darting before us, both believing our untimely ends were a whisper away with the Trident being flung about the sky like a Kamikaze shuttlecock. Weird images of grinning black crows and a cackling Lucifer holding an Oxo cube between his thumb and forefinger were all too prevalent in both our minds. Maybe the K&P shoot hadn’t been so bad after all. Now, seemingly, we couldn’t wait to get back to Alnmouth, maybe even to the Schooner for a quick flagon of gin with Peter Moynihan. Such shenanigans suddenly seemed like a really good idea.

‘Put a tiger in your tank.’

“Now then, now then, now then…”
SFX: Machine gun fire.



* * * * * * * * *



CHAPTER 16. FUN AND GAMES.

Why do birds suddenly appear
Every time you are near?
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you

Why do stars fall down from the sky
Every time you walk by?
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you

On the day that you were born the angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair
Of golden starlight in your eyes of blue

That is why all the girls in town
(Girls in town)

Follow you
(Follow you)
All around
(All around)
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you

On the day that you were born the angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair
Of golden starlight in your eyes of blue

That is why all the girls in town
(Girls in town)
Follow you
(Follow you)
All around
(All around)
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you

(Why? Close to you)
(Why? Close to you)
(Haa, close to you)

If Veroushka Tufty was good at anything, it was dishing out nicknames. Allen Thomas had teamed up with John St Claire, an art director from Jeremy Bullmore’s original group, to become the first official creative team of art director and copywriter in JWT London. Part of Bob Judd’s group, who was replaced by the tall, puffy faced, David McColm, when Bob left to go back to the States, they shared their own office and became a formidable double act, often competing in the sense of humour stakes.

     John, the quieter of the two, was incredibly tall and thin, with a deep, cultured voice, while Allen was the opposite – shorter, stocky and very square with a habit of lifting his hands up to his face and waving his fingers in space whilst laughing or displaying his boundless enthusiasm. VT named him the Dancing Bear and John, whom she said reminded her of a stick insect, just that. John and Allen became known to everyone as the Stick and the Bear, both seeming to relish in the titles, even between themselves. Allen called John Stick while John referred to his partner as Bear or Dancer. I was in their room one day when someone asked them what highballed meant. Quick as a flash, Allen said it was description reserved for the Stick when he stood up, being that his waistline was level with most peoples’ eyes. John countered with the notion that highballed was an accurate summation of the position of the Bear’s testicles when he was lying down. The two were not only talented but an incredibly articulate duo and, as such, particularly formidable to account men. In the past it had been a fairly easy task to turn down the creative work of a single person on a whim but to be faced with a pair such as the Stick and the Bear must have been like trying to attack a battleship in a rowing boat. Many an agitated and misguided rep came away from such a confrontation not just battered but sunk without trace.

     One very short, bumptious little account director, by the name of Jock Russell, ill-advisedly tried to take the Stick and Bear on over a prolonged period of time. For this he was publically renamed, Jack Russell by the pair and, following one particularly blustery encounter in their office, Allen sent him a long memo pointing out his errors of judgment in no uncertain terms ending with:
     ‘We hope to hear from you, Shorty.’

BAG IT

Art director, John St. Claire’s unique voice is difficult to describe - posh, slightly plumb-in-the-mythe, slowly delivered in a somewhat heavenly manner, not surprising considering John’s seemingly immense height; he would have made a great vicar. Returning to 40 Berkeley Square one afternoon after a lunchtime shopping expedition, John was apparently furious and went straight into a rant.
     “So I’m walking past this camping gear type shop in Savile Row and in the window is a beautiful, leather holdall for 35 quid. I go in and the guy gets it out of the window and I give him the cash. He says the bag costs 135 quid and I say the display says 35. He says this is a mistake. I say he has to sell it to me for 35 under the Trades Descriptions Act of 1968, whereby an object must be sold according to the price displayed. The guy says he doesn’t care about that and will only sell the bag for 135 quid. We get into quite an argument and a couple of other customers join in on his side, can you believe? I get really cross and the guy tells me to leave the store before he calls the cops. I tell him not to bother as they’ll be visiting him soon anyway.
     “I leave the store and march straight along to the Savile Row cop shop a couple of doors away, and speak to the duty sergeant. I explain the situation and that as far as I can see the shop has to sell me the bag for the displayed price of 35 quid and not the 135 they’re asking as this contravenes the Trade’s Descriptions Act of 1968 whereby an object must be sold according to the price displayed. I ask the sergeant what he’s going to do about it.”
     “What did he say?” I asked the irate Mr. St. Claire.
     “He said, ‘piss orf!’”

     V.T. probably had a really nasty nickname for me but I never heard it. Richard eventually became known as the Mad Barker, but the title was awarded by Ann XXX, a copywriter and eventual girlfriend of Morris Twose, a new group head who joined JWT from Davidson Pierce Berry and Tuck in 1970. Richard and I were placed in Morris’s group for a while by which time, Richard had ‘loudened’ his persona somewhat. When I first met him, Richard had seemed fairly quiet and reserved and with his Jesus Christ haircut and beard, Hush Puppies and drip-dry trousers, the image he projected was one of slightly shambling, eccentricity. I got quite a shock, then, when Lawrence, at the beginning of the Barker/Hutchins cube war, came storming along the second floor corridor and started shouting at Richard who was lying back in his chair in the coffin. It was as if someone had put a match to a barrel of gunpowder.

     The usually deep, cultured Barker voice, erupted in a searing roar, which must have been heard on the dark side of the moon. He didn’t lose his temper, but totally out-noised the equally surprised Lawrence, nailing him to the opposite wall with a tirade of irrefutable, articulation, which, in passing, accused the irate producer of letting his emotions get in the way of logic. I was stunned. So was Lawrence, who eventually backed off, and went away nursing his wounds. Richard took me into his confidence about his confidence which he felt was growing. He wanted to repackage it. He wanted to have a suit made and asked me if I could recommend a Tailor. I took him to meet the Tarry Brothers, of Walter Tarry and Sons of Bromley, Kent, an establishment I’d used for several years, being an admirer of bespoke tailoring but unable to afford Savile Row prices.

     Soon, Richard was the owner of a light brown hand-faced, 2-piece, tailored suit, which, complimented by the addition of a pair of Russel and Bromley tan loafers and a couple of well-chosen shirts and ties, seemed to do the trick. He had his long, sandy coloured hair and beard tidied up at the Leonard Salon in Grosvenor Square and the picture was complete. Already, well over six feet tall, he seemed to grow another foot. Despite his mother, an astute, not-to-be messed with lady, examining the suit and commenting that it wasn’t quite up to scratch in some of the details, Richard was pleased enough to order another from Walter Tarry and Sons in pale green.

     The shambling persona had been eradicated, replaced by one emanating style, elegance and more than a touch of panache. I’d swear his voice became louder. His natural wit certainly came rushing to the surface to become one of his trademarks, along with his newfound stature, and a newly projected, slightly prickly tinge of deliberate, wicked madness. All-in-all, Richard Barker became a definite all-round force to be reckoned in JWT London. He didn’t need all the trappings. He was already and extremely intelligent, capable, articulate and talented man. They just helped pave the way.

     He also became a wicked bugger. Being the possessor of an extremely sweet tooth, I developed a passion for Bounty Bars and would occasionally nip down to the second floor in-house mini super market and get one. I’d place it on the edge of the desk while I was busy, as a reward for later. The tall, stringy R.B. would sweep into the room, as was his want, grab the bar in his long, twig-like fingers, take a bite and raise the bar out of reach with his massively long arms. He’d eat the whole bloody thing, making gluttonous noises, with me making pathetic attempts to grab it back.

     Another time, in the middle of a particularly sticky summer’s day, when I was really up against it putting together some layouts for a new product development project we’d been working with, he asked me if I’d like a can of coke, and said he’d pop down to the shop and get me one. This was before the days of ring-pull cans and when he returned he placed the can on the edge of the desk, resting a small can opener on top.
     “When you’re ready,” he said, quietly, obviously sympathetic to the pressure I was under.

     Touched by this sudden display of magnanimousness, when I’d finished what I was doing, I reached gratefully for the can. What I didn’t know was that the bastard had been violently shaking the bloody thing all the way back up the stairs, pausing outside the office door to give it a final tweak. I held the can, pressing it firmly on the desktop, with one hand and taking the opener in the other, pierced the top. The entire contents of the can whooshed up right arm and smacking me right between the eyes, the fallout spilling over some of the layouts.

     After this, I swore vengeance, and together with Valerie, one of the JWT home economists, we made a plan, preparing the ultimate booby trap. Carefully unwrapping a Bounty Bar, she carefully cut out the chocolate bases of both halves of the bar and scooped out the coconut filling. Mixing the stuff with Cayenne pepper, she re-filled the two bars, sealed the bottoms and replaced the wrapping. It was so simple. I’d just place the Bounty Bar on the edge of the desk as usual and wait for the explosion. Sadly, I pulled out at the last minute. Not because I’d had a sudden rush of sympathy and/or forgiveness towards The Joker, I just didn’t think it worth receiving a life term for murder. I’d remembered Richard’s accident several years before when he broke his neck at the wheel of the Lotus Cortina and that several vertebrae in his neck were supported by what he’d described as bits of wire, and how wary he was of making sudden neck movements.

     Bugger! The effect of today’s taser guns would have been nothing compared to that created by a cayenne loaded Bounty Bar in R.B.’s greedy gob. I don’t think even today, he has any idea of the lucky escape he had. Despite the willfully projected sense of madness, Richard was both a good listener and severe critic, should one give him the opportunity. He once asked me if I knew what the s.a.l.t talks were. I had no idea and he seemed appalled. What could be so important about a few trillion grains of Saxa? He explained in no uncertain terms that the Americans and Russians were in serious debate – the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks - in an attempt to find a way of preventing either side blowing the other, and consequently, the whole world to smithereens, and that I should at least take a passing interest in the finely balanced future of the planet I lived on and if I didn’t, I had no business being involved in such a globally influential industry as advertising.

     Up to that point, I’d had no interest whatsoever in world affairs and politics, but decided maybe Richard was right and that I should perhaps catch up a bit, which I tried to do. Richard himself was a staunch supporter of the Liberal party and was to some degree an active member. I had no particular political leanings and over the years have moved right, left, centre, round in circles and back to the right, finally coming to the conclusion 12 years ago, that the whole business of world politics is a cesspit of vile corruption, and that the world’s population, governments, and particularly the media, are controlled by some of the very corporations I used to spend my life promoting. It’s almost laughable, but not quite. In the words of Tony Soprano, “Whadyagonnado?”

     JWT had its fair share of extremely intelligent staff members whom it was a privilege to work alongside. Apart from the 7th floor officers already mentioned and Jeremy Bullmore, there was the late Stephen King. No, not the famous scribe of bloodthirsty horror stories, but the affable, long time friend of Jeremy and co-intelligentsia member, who invented account planning, (To be explained later.) and whose welcoming, smiley disposition, belied a brain the size of Jupiter.

ANIMAL FARM

In 1970, Richard Barker flew off to L.A. to attend the Katie and Philip Oxo commercial shoot. We’d been stuck for an idea as to where to take the series next, and Morris Twose, our then creative group head, suggested America, a notion leapt at by both the agency and the client, and, of course, Richard. I didn’t go, but Richard had many a story to tell on his return, notably one of him spending most of a whole evening sitting on the floor of the shower in his hotel room, fingers rammed in his ears and the shower full on in an attempt to drown out the sounds coming from the adjoining room.
     “Not only was I unable to sleep” Richard said, “but it was cringe-makingly embarrassing, to say the least. I could only imagine what they doing were in there, but I didn’t really want to. The screams and moans were like a farmyard of animals being attacked by wolves. Maybe someone was having a bad dream but I think that was unlikely. I don’t really know who was loudest – the female pig or the male.”

     John Lindsay-Bethune was reputably a cousin to the Queen and certainly looked like it, his features being a cross between the late King George VI and his Nazi brother, the abdicated Edward. He was a good deal taller than both at over 6ft, fittingly resplendent in his navy blue Royal tailoring, which was appropriately complimented by unmistakably Royal sounding vocal chords. A senior board director, JLB resided on the second floor in a room obviously borrowed from Buck House, (Hise) as the Palace was described by ex-guards officer and account man, John Soames, with its dark, gilt framed paintings, royal blue carpet and delicately legged side tables. Obviously a graduate of the same school of gentlemen Michael Cooper-Evans had attended, JLB was arguably less cool than ‘Mike The Bike’, as he was affectionately and inexplicably known, but was no less charismatic. He also had a shorter fuse.

     An ardent puffer of Hamlet cigars, he was in mid chat in a meeting in his office one day, and making a very important point to the gathering about the new brand of fags I was designing the packaging for, when he took out a new pack of H from his inside pocket, unwrapped the cellophane, and placed a fresh cigar between his lips, reaching for the box of matches on the glass Royal coffee table in front of the sumptuous Royal sofa he and I were sharing. The matches were mine and I had an unfortunate habit of putting dead strikers back in the box. After several attempts to light the cheroot by actually trying to strike dead matches, JLB lost his train of thought and cool and, suddenly red-faced, flung the open box of expired matches and packet of cigars across the room accompanied by a loud, Royal “FUCK IT!” It seemed that happiness wasn’t always a cigar called Hamlet. I felt I should have confessed to being the owner of the renegade matches and apologized, but the compunction wasn’t over strong.

     As with most advertising agencies, JWT also had its fair share of bastards, tossers, creeps and twats. A JWT bastard was TV producer, Michael Johnson, who took great delight in being recognized as the agency bully. The big, heavy Welshman with grey, curly hair, a maniacal stare and bloodcurdling voice, had a disagreement with someone in the agency local, The Coach and Horses, one evening.

     Having swallowed enough booze to float a liner, Johnson proceeded to jump his full weight onto the man’s foot, spreading the shoe, toes and tendons into a leathery, bloody pancake on the pub carpet. Some people thought the incident hilarious but it seemed an absolute travesty that for such a callous, cowardly, unfeeling act of violence, which would have earned admiration from both the Cray and Richardson brothers, Johnson wasn’t fired from JWT, banned from the pub or blasted at point blank range with a sawn off, twelve bore shotgun. The latter punishment, I would keenly have volunteered to carry out. Not that all advertising agency TV producers are psychopaths, it must be said, but a similar bullying character fulfilled the role of producer and agency bully as Michael Johnson at Benton and Bowles in 1974.

     Tom Ingrams was a stocky drunk who got his kicks by terrorizing staff at the Knightsbridge office. For no particular reason he once grabbed my head between the fingers of both his hands as I sat at my desk and squeezed as hard as he could. I started to black out and were it not for the intervention of Tony Broadbent, my friend and copywriter at the time, and then deputy creative director, Richard Smith, I could have suffered serious injury or ended up brown bread. I’ve no doubt Tony would have fought valiantly on my behalf but, I suspect, would have come off worse, Ingrams loosening his grip, turning, and grinning maniacally in Tony’s direction, salivating at the prospect of a kill. Richard Smith appeared from his office and offered to tear the producer’s arms off if he didn’t leave the scene immediately, and realizing this wasn’t just an idle threat from the big man, my assailant did just that.

     It was gratifying to hear that later that year, at the Cannes advertising film festival, Ronnie Fouracre, director, and husband of ex-beauty queen, Eva Reuber-Staier, both of whom I knew reasonably well, punched Ingrams in the face, plunging him into the hotel swimming pool after the scumbag had made disgusting comments about Eva as the couple sat at a poolside table. Not quite the sawn off shotgun technique both Ronnie and I would have preferred, but pretty neat. It’s just a shame the pool wasn’t full off nitric acid.

     Not all the chaps who resided on the JWT’s 7th floor were top hole either. A few were distinctly bottom (arse) hole. Account man in charge of sales promotion, Ken Holmes, was OK in a suave, Home Counties sort of way, but a bit of sleaze bag on the side, once describing the glamour model he’d cast to promote an Oxo tea towel as having the attributes of a bed full of tigers, an assessment apparently made from first hand knowledge. Ken drove a very second hand, orange E-Type Jaguar, which, because of his scurrilous activities, almost cost him his life. Having befriended the senior Brooke Bond Oxo client, (Ken even helped the man decorate his flat,) using the time the two men spent together to his own advantage. Not only did he pick the Oxo man’s brains about various BBO trade secrets, but he learned the location of the formula for the Oxo cube, which he stole, leaving JWT to produce his own rival cube and market it into several supermarket outlets.

     The corridors of 40 Berkeley Square were suddenly frequented by strange little men in shabby raincoats nipping in and out of Jeremy Bullmore’s office and padding about the 7th floor. These were private detectives straight from Central Casting. It was as if JWT’s historic reputation had been re-written by Graham Greene. I have no idea what the outcome of the scandal was, everything being kept under ironclad wraps. What I do know is that Ken’s jet propelled Outspan canoe disappeared from outside his West London flat not long after he’d found the petrol tank had been filled with copious amounts a sugar.

     Several days later, Mr. Holmes received a ghostly telephone call telling him that his precious status symbol was resting in the Brooke Bond Oxo head office car park in Croydon, if he’d like to collect it. He probably did this in the middle of a moonless night or sent a mate to do the deed. Either way, judging by the state of the car when it was back with its owner, it had been severely test driven to the limit of its capabilities and well beyond. Being a convertible, the car’s hood had been removed allowing the interior to be thoroughly washed by several days of downpour. It was as if the bodywork had been attacked with a hammer, which it probably had, according to the unnamed BBO sales force calling card Rory found in the glove box and the screwed up Oxo cube foil in the ashtray.

     The car was now only fit for the scrap yard, but Ken foolishly gave the thing one last drive and, cruising swiftly along the fast lane of the M1, he was caused to suddenly apply the brakes - nothing too unusual in that, except there weren’t any. Brakes, that is. The pedal moved half an inch then jammed – a little disturbing at 80 odd mph. Luckily for him, our Kenny managed to weave his way across to the hard shoulder and allow the thing to coast to a stop, which is where he left it, leaving the scene to change his trousers. As demonstrated in chapter 1, it doesn’t ever do to piss off one salesman, let alone a whole army of the buggers.

PRICKS

“What the hell’s he doing here?” asked Howard Cue, noting the appearance of a new face in the fifth floor part of the creative department at 40 Berkeley Square. This was Dick Traylor, a South African art director, and possible double to the English actor, Barry Foster, and teacher at Ealing Art College where Howard had studied. Dick kept himself to himself at first, sharing a room with a guy fresh out of The London College of Printing, who’d been employed as his assistant. However, the seemingly shy, retiring persona was soon to change dramatically almost overnight. Dick was briefed to come up with a launch idea for the Kodak Instamatic, the first camera designed to make taking pictures easy peasy even for the average klutz.

     These days of course, everyone who has a mobile phone has turned into David Bailey or Cartier Bresson, such is the quality of the technology, but back then, just having your holiday snaps guaranteed by this little black plastic box to at least be in focus and exposed reasonably well without having to mess around with light meters and stuff was a major breakthrough. All you had to do was point and squirt, so to speak, it was that simple to use. Either Dick or the writer he was working with came up with the notion that it was all as simple as blinking – not a bad notion, most people thought, and ‘Simple As Blinking’ became the campaign end line, strap line, sign off line, whatever the descriptive preference. What Dick did for the visual, though, I was never really comfortable with. Basically, he replaced the camera lens with an eyeball. In a press ad there would be a flat on picture of the camera, which was fair enough, but there was also this creepy eyeball staring at you and there was something not quite right about it.

     The camera lens/eyeball analogy was right on but somehow an inanimate object with one human eye was like something from a Roald Dahl horror story or Hitchcock thriller. Maybe if the thing had had two peepers it wouldn’t have been so bad…? The TV was even weirder. The bloody eye actually winked at you. It really made me shudder. I half expected the camera to leap out of the screen and go for the jugular. This wasn’t just my opinion. It was shared by quite a few, but the idea was heralded as a masterstroke by both client and agency management, so people kept schtum - a pure case of the Emperor’s New Togs, I reckoned.

     Dick didn’t keep schtum. Almost before the campaign had been pinned on the 3rd floor ‘campaign of the month notice board’ he was waxing lyrical. Actually, he was shouting from the highest hill, at the top of his bloody lungs. It seemed his voice could be heard everywhere in the agency, not to mention, the entire Western World. You couldn’t get away from it even if you locked yourself in a lavatory cubicle on a different floor with your hands over your lugs. And he didn’t stop. He was suddenly not merely an advertising genius but a world authority on anything you’d care to name, and boy, did he want you to name something. He’d hold court in the Coach and Horses most evenings leaning at the bar just inside the door to catch the attention of anyone who entered the pub,
     “Oh, ya, I really love jargon. Jargon is what’s it’s all about these days. I mean, without jargon, you’re nowhere. It’s like, Zap! Zap! Zap! (making a rising rabbit punch gesture with his hand) Jargon adds so much more meaning to what you have to say, and if people don’t get it, that’s their problem. Ya, I’d hate to live in a world where’s there’s no jargon. How boring would thet be, uh?” (pretty much a word for word quote from one such Dick Traylor sermon.)

     Dick had invented a brand new personality for himself – his own image of how he saw himself, or rather how he thought the world saw him now he’d become such a superstar. He changed his hairstyle, pulling his tight mat of wavy, sandy locks down over his brow. He took to wearing a red and white spotted neckerchief with his suit instead of a tie and small Cuban healed boots, checking the whole package in the reflections of car windows on his way to the pub every evening, particularly pulling his newfound wiry kiss curl further over his forehead. Somehow, Dick’s self-publicity campaign worked. After group head, Maurice Twose, whose group Richard Barker and I were in at the time, left the agency and returned to Davidson Pierce, Dick was promoted and took over the running of the group. Sadly, Maurice died soon after of liver cancer, and Rick claimed to feel his presence in the room whenever he sat in Maurice’s chair.

     Dick was forever lecturing the group members on the benefits of his own particular insights into the creative process, but I for one, didn’t understand a word. Whenever there was a pitch or new campaign on the go, he’d disappear into the haunted room and do what he described as his own brand of creative ‘wristing’ - producing a raft of A4 magic marker doodles, which included the odd supposedly relevant word, before gathering the whole group to present his marvels of creative wisdom to them, no doubt expecting them all to fall at his feet. Were it not for his Everest sized ego clouding the issue, he would have noticed that nobody fell at his feet, even though most of us were on the edge of doing so, surrounded by a sudden urge to fall asleep on the spot. Dick’s charming little pictures covered the walls like so much wallpaper, which was in a way impressive and, as he took us through every one, describing his thought process and demonstrating how each eureka moment led to the next. We waited with baited breath for revelation of the final, white-hot conclusion. But there wasn’t one. Ever.

     Dick’s biggest problem was that no one seemed to know what he was on about. Richard and I were in a meeting with him and Fred Silvester, a Tory M.P. and senior board director in charge of the Beachams account. We’d been working on the development of ‘Midnight’, a proposed new late night chocolate drink. We’d developed a pack and made a pilot commercial but things hadn’t gone that well in research and Fred was taking the great guru through the developmental history when Dick suddenly said out of the blue,
     “Yup. Sure. I get it. You think things are pretty cool but you wouldn’t want your daughter to marry one.”

     red, usually a man of many considered and contemplative words, couldn’t think of one to use as a reply. In a short time, the JWT management, especially those in charge of key accounts in Dick’s group, became nervous and several pieces of business were moved to Peter Bostock’s group 2 floors below, including Brooke Bond Oxo, Beechams, Smarties & Polo Mints along with Richard and I. A few days after the event, I walked into the Coach and Horses to find Dick in his usual position with a much-reduced entourage,
     “Hi, Neal,” he said, “Still losing?”
     My reply was automatic and instant: “Hi, Dick. Still a prick?”

     While I was still on the 5th floor of JWT London, 40 Berkeley Square, yet another new man appeared at the helm of a creative group just along the corridor, Mike Millar. He was from New York, small and skinny with glasses and reminiscent of Woody Allen when he was doing his stand up stuff in the early Sixties. Just like Woody, Millar’s shoulders sloped at 45 degrees from left to right like a ski run, which gave him a naturally comic posture. He was a loud little rat, full of his own importance, always yelling at his secretary in the bay outside his office so that everyone could hear.
     “Has that call come in from News York yet, Susan? Let me know as soon as that call comes in from New York, will you, Susan?’ Then he’d come out of the office and lean over her, trying to see down her front. ‘It’s very important that you let me know as soon as the call comes through from New York, Susan. Very important.”

     One of the agency’s major accounts was Gillette - not one of the most creative of clients. They had their own way of doing things and saw the world very much as revolving around them and their razor blades. JWT didn’t have the whole account. It was spread around a number of top name agencies, and when a new project came up, they all got a chance to pitch for it. In one case, they’d just developed the Gillette G2, the first twin blade razor, which was a real breakthrough in shaving technology.

     It actually worked. It really did give you a closer shave. Obviously, this launch was a very big deal for Gillette and JWT, not just for the revenue but for the prestige and a chance to stick it to the other roster agencies. The whole agency got involved initially. It was as if they believed they stood more chance of getting the big idea if they use the scattergun technique - spread your shot wide enough, and you’re bound to hit something.

     Richard Lynham, another JWT copywriter, told me he’d worked on the pitch:
     “So we all had to troupe up the board room a team and a time and present our ideas to a committee of agency big wigs while they sat in judgment like a load a magistrates. I was working with an Australian art director at the time. He was good and a real tough cookie. Anyway, our campaign line was ‘G2 – shaves you twice as close’. Pretty obvious, we thought, but true of the product. The ads were all about really close shaves – nothing to with shaving but every day scenarios like a bloke who runs off from his bride when he’s at the alter, that kind of stuff.
     “It was a load of rubbish and they rightly turned it down. They did buy the line though and asked us to go away and rethink the advertising. To cut a long story short, a week before the presentation, no one had cracked it but a couple of teams had got close including Ross and me. They decided to put a load of stuff into research and somehow, nobody really knows how, Millar came up with an idea that the committee hadn’t seen and got it bunged in with the rest at the last minute.
     “If the committee had seen it, it wouldn’t have gone into research. I mean the idiot missed the point entirely. His line was, ‘Shaves you twice as fast’, can you believe? The ads were all about blokes shaving while on their way somewhere, like there was a taxi driver in his cab, a bloke on a bike, a city gent on a bus. It was absolute crap. BUT, and you’re not going to believe it, Millar’s’s rubbish came out top in research. The researcher must have been working for the other side or something.
     “The trouble was that we were stuck with it. We had to use the client’s own chosen research company and nothing that hadn’t been researched could be presented. There was no way we could dump Millar’s stuff because the research company sent Gillette a full report on their findings before the presentation. We had no choice but to go ahead and work it up for presentation.
     “Of course, Millar was over the moon. He made a real big deal of sending scripts out for storyboarding and kept turning stuff down for obscure reasons. He really wanted everyone to know that he, and he alone was in charge of the agency’s destiny. I met one of the studio reps in the corridor after Millar had turned down the storyboard drawings for the 3rd time saying they didn’t capture the genius of the comedy in the scripts. I knew the bloke well, and he was livid. He told me that if the mad bastard ever talked to him like that again, he’d punch his lights out for good.
     “It gets worse. Things got completely out of control. Millar’s stuff became the front-runner and because no one wanted to present it, Millar nominated himself. Then, two days before the presentation, we got word that there had been a problem with flight arrangements from New York and that the Gillette boys were going to arrive a day late. As they were scheduled for a meeting in Cologne the following day, they wouldn’t be able to make it to the agency and we’d have to meet them at Heathrow in between fights. Also, the Gillette big wig, a guy named Gordon Fielding, was going to be at the presentation.
     “This was really bad news. Fielding was a man who ate and slept the company line and was totally bereft of anything resembling a sense of humour. He was a big, mean-looking bugger with a long cliff of a face like something from the Mount Rushmore Monument. Even his minions were scared shitless of him. He was nicknamed ‘Stoneface’, a moniker invented by the agency but picked up and used by some of the guys from Gillette themselves.
     “So on the morning of the big day, we all trouped out to Heathrow in a fleet of Limousines. Everyone who was anyone from JWT was in the cortège and Ross and I went along as our idea came in second in research. It wasn’t a posh hotel suite we had to make our presentation in though, it was an old one storied brown brick building, like an old factory or something. Stoneface and his compatriots were already sitting behind a long table at one end when we got there. They all had their hands folded in front of them. They all had their overcoats on as the place was like a fridge.
     “We all sat in lines of old wooden chairs like a vergers’ film club audience in a church hall. A few brief words of intro were uttered and then someone from the planning department made a short, nervous preamble and then Millar was given the floor. He shot to his feet with his pile of cardboard under his arm, which he stashed against the wall underneath a long shelf that ran the entire length of the room below a line of windows a few of which were broken and letting a pretty strong draft.
     “Millar was like some kind of demented windmill waving his arms about as he pranced about acting out the scripts as he read them. Every now and then, he’d stoop down and scoop up one of his presentation boards and stand it on the shelf. Trouble is the draft from the holes in the windows blew it over again and he had to make a grab at it as it floated to earth like a paper airplane. In any other circumstances, it would have been hilarious but at the time it was cringe-makingly embarrassing. A couple of the junior suits got up and tried to help him by holding the boards on the shelf but there were soon too many for them to cope with.
     “Stoneface and his henchmen sat motionless throughout the entire charade until at last, after what seemed like an eternity, Millar’s spring seemed to uncoil completely and he collapsed into a chair panting like a shagged out dog. You could’ve cut the silence with a scalpel. Stoneface looked down at the white pad in front of him for a what must have been a couple of minutes before looked up and spoke. This was the first time he’d been exposed to the creative work and his soldiers were as nervous as we were.
     “‘Thank you, J Walter Thompson for your presentation,’ he said kind of slowly and looking each of us right in the eyes in turn, “Now what I’d like you to do is to pack up all your cardboard and bits of paper and put it all in your little black bag, take it back to 40 Berkeley Square and burn it.’
     “With that, they all stood up and followed their leader out the door, most of them expecting to be fired, I reckon. Soon after, Millar was gone from the agency.”

HOT STUFF

Another JWT 7th floor misfit was Chris Cowling. He was graduate of the Control Department, which was staffed with the JWT police – people who made sure briefs were recorded and dished out on pink bits of paper called requisitions, and then made sure (tried to) the work was done on time, converted to artwork on time and appeared in publications or on TV on time for the right cost. In other agencies, they were called traffic and or production people and sometimes included art buyers, whose job it was to recommend photographers and illustrators and negotiate fees.

     The JWT controllers were nothing if not efficient and made sure the agency ran the same way. It was a thankless task, and not that well paid, the cops often having to bully stubborn creative people who sometimes didn’t fancy producing work they considered unglamorous and not worth doing. There was an army of them split into 3 or 4 groups, each with a sergeant major in charge. They worked long hours, frequently developing stomach ulcers, not to mention massive, re-occurring headaches.

     JWT controllers were usually quite bright people who’d at least had a couple of O levels under their belt but no idea what they wanted to do. For many, it was a way into advertising, enticed by a promise that they could one day become account handlers or reps in the case of JWT. Few of them made it up that particular ladder, having succumbed to the relentless, boring everyday tasks they had plate loads of, which in the end beat them down, tarnishing their desire to better themselves or even eroding their will to live. Head honcho of the outfit was Harry Garnell, a cigar smoking, ex-print trade man with in his forties sporting a handle bar moustache and well-lunched stomach. Tony Rawlins himself told me of a member of the control department whom, in his initial interview, was taken to lunch by Harry G. The bloke addressed H.G. during the meal as Mr. Garnell but the smiling general insisted he call him Harry. The guy was offered a job and on his first morning met H.G. in the lift.
     “Morning, Harry,” the bloke said, enthusiastically.
     “Mr. Garnell, to you, lad,” came an ice-cold reply.

     Garnell, was the original Fat Controller and it’s not surprising that the status felt by most members of the JWT control dept. was on the lowly side.

     Chris Cowling, however, was fiercely ambitious. He hung out at the Coach and Horses with creative people rather than with any of his controller colleagues and at one time shared a flat with Allen Thomas, John St. Claire and Roger Knights. Chris was a very good guitar player and he and Roger used to entertain at the odd agency party doing a pretty neat imitation of the Everly Brothers. Chris also endeared himself to members of the 7th floor becoming friendly with Rob Wilson, a new South Wales, ex-Geelong Grammar School student and 7th floor super star and the intensely hard working, Miles Colbrook, who went on to become the agency managing director and later, chairman of JWT worldwide.

     It wasn’t long before Chris had wriggled his somewhat overweight frame into a chair on the 7th floor, a promotion, which went immediately to his head and to his, literally, salivating gob. He became insufferably power drunk, chucking his weight about in no uncertain terms. When several creative pairs went on a weekend brain storming session at the Complete Angler Hotel in Marlow, he confiscated all the keys to the mini bars, claiming that if we drank, we’d do a less effective job. I was paired with Mike Reynolds, whom, as soon as Chris left our room, called reception and ordered several bottles of champagne to be delivered to his room against T.R.’s room number.
     “Fuck him!” was Mike’s assessment of the situation.

     On the last day, after we’d presented the work, Chris invited the teams to lunch at a Chinese restaurant near Windsor Castle, probably to show off the power he wielded in his ability to spend the agency’s money. I don’t know how it started but the subject of chilies cropped up and before we knew it, the company was challenged to chew a raw one and swallow it. Mike picked one from his plate between his fingers, popped the little red devil into his mouth, and chewed purposefully. After a minute, he took a sip of water and swallowed hard. There seemed to be no side effects whatever and he sat back I his chair.
     “Nothing to it. Anyone else up for it?”

     Cowling couldn’t resist the throwing down of such an ego-challenging gauntlet. There was no way he could allow a few creative johnnies to beat him in any way. He picked up a chilli, nonchalantly tossed it into his gob and bit down hard. The effect was astonishing. In a split second, his eyes were pouring water, his face a river of sweat. He started to choke, and, grabbing a pitcher of water, downed the lot to no effect. He started to cough and splutter, his face, seeming to swell to twice its size, glowed red like a traffic light, and though the smiled was still fixed, even that looked painful. He staggered to his feet and made for the gents, returning five minute later, his hair soaked, and still red in the face and smiling.
     “The one you had, couldn’t have been as strong as mine,” he said hoarsley to Mike as he, pulled on is jacket, and made for the counter to pay the bill.
     “A chilli’s a chilli,” shrugged Mike.

     Chris paid the bill and left the restaurant telling us not to be too late back to the hotel.
     “That brought the bastard down a peg of three,” someone commented when he’d gone,
     “How come it never effected you the same way, Mike?”
     “Never chew chillies, I say,” said Mike, taking a sip of wine.”
     “But we saw you do it,” said someone else.
     “Nah, not me, squire. That was just a tiny piece of tomato.”

     In his arrogance, Chris upset many people in the agency, notably, David Barker, (No relation of Richard) a fiercely ambitious art director from Bensons, the agency later to become O&M, when Ogilvy and Mather acquired it. Barker, a tall, boyish, almost albino, part time racing driver and pretty good art director (he worked on Guiness – anyone who worked on Guiness had to be good) decided, in his own cold-blooded way, to get his own back. With Valentine’s Day coming up, Barker, who occupied the office next to mine when Richard and I were in Peter Bostock’s group, had a studio prepare a heart shaped presentation box about the size of a luxury box of chocs. A romantic note was attached, but inside the box, Barker laid a fresh, bloody ox’s heart wrapped in foil and addressed the box to Rawlins. On February 14th, 1972, the box was delivered to reception at 40 Berkeley Square, and Barker made sure the receptionist called Cowling and told him of the delivery.

     We never found out what happened. All we did know was that Cowling sent his secretary to collect the box when it arrived. Nothing about the contents was ever mentioned by anyone after Cowling took it into his office and closed the door. The mind boggles at what went through his mind when he opened it. It was the most sinister prank I ever heard of in my 45 years in the advertising business, but I’ve always thought that if the distinctly Arian looking David Barker had been born 20 years earlier, not even necessarily of German descent, an SS uniform would’ve fitted him as well as the one I recommended for Herbert Weise.

THE EMPEROR’S NEW COAT

I entered the lift at 40 Berkeley Square one freezing Winter morning with Max Henry and another art director, Paul Colsell. Paul was wearing a huge, grey, herringbone, tweed, double breasted, belted overcoat that stretched almost to the ground.
     “Nice coat,” Max, the enigmatic, Rasputin double, commented,
     “Where did you get it?”
     “It was 200 guineas from Mr. Fish,” Paul replied.

     Max nodded his approval, obviously impressed.(A guinea was one pound and one old shilling before the metric system was introduced and Mr. Fish one of several ultra trendy, ultra expensive men’s fashion shops in and around Savile Row in the late sixties.)

     On the 5th floor, Max left the lift first, and Paul shook with painfully contained laughter.
     “What’s so funny?” I asked Paul as he and I walked along the corridor.
     “I paid 2 bob (two old shillings) for the coat in a jumble sale.”

THE ALSATIAN

When Richard Barker and I first started working together regularly, we decided we’d have to put in more hours and burn the midnight oil if we were ever going to get anywhere in the business. A lot of other people in the JWT creative department thought we were silly and boring for doing so, but we took on board the advice one of my tutors at Sidcup art school once gave me as a pointer to success on any creative journey – ‘fuck ‘em all!”

     Before we managed to steal our own room, we’d spend many late evenings in Richard’s tiny ‘coffin’ office on the second floor, which was only just big for two. It was around 10pm one such time when the door suddenly burst open to reveal what looked like some kind of crazy lunatic with a chair leg in his fist, raised above his head ready to pound someone’s brains in. I’m sure we both yelled out in shock and Richard looked as terrified as I felt.

     Thankfully, the looney changed his mind about cold-blooded murder and apologized for disturbing us. This was Stanley, the new security guard, who’d been hired to tour the building late at night in the hope of catching – in his case, killing – any burglars who might be prowling about. They’d been several break-ins and furniture, pictures and TV sets had been lifted, not to mention the odd safe. Stanley wasn’t an attractive person by any stretch of the imagination and his graveyard of crooked yellow choppers, completely bald nut and maze of moles standing proud amongst his already alarming features, were enough to frighten anyone to death. Why he needed a chair leg was anyone’s guess. He looked like a boxer who’d seen better days. Actually, he looked like a boxer who’d never had any. His sleeves were rolled up revealing two huge, blue tattoos adorning both his forearm and his braces hung in loops from the waistband of his obviously new, blue serge trousers which sagged long over a pair of shiny, black boots. Maybe the top half of his uniform had made him feel uncomfortably like a member of the Old Bill.

     When the 3 of us had got over the shock – Richard and I at the sudden prospect of being spread all over the coffin walls and Stanley at almost murdering two members of JWT staff, we introduced ourselves and found him to be an affable chap. We certainly felt perfectly safe in such a large building late at night and Richard named Stanley the Alsatian. He’d look in on us on the odd night, minus the chair leg, and we’d chat. He told us he’d been in the army and had lived in Italy after the war – even married an Italian girl and had a bambino, as he put it, but all that seemed be in the past and he now lived alone in London. He seemed a bit of a lost, lonely character and we did our best to make feel as ease with us.

     He addressed us as Mr. Barker and Mr. Bailey, somehow not being able to get his head round my Yorkshire based sir name. He once asked us to look out for a 5 pound note he said he’d dropped somewhere in the building. We told Stanley we’d keep an eye out but Richard lent him a fiver anyway, it being pretty obvious to a blind man he was pretty hard up. On the run up to Christmas we asked him if he had any plans, like visiting family members, but he said there was no one in the country that he had contact with any longer but that he’d be quite happy to watch TV over the festive period with a bottle of good scotch for company.

     Immediately after Christmas, Richard and I were called to the personnel office and told that Stanley had been found dead in his West London bedsit. There had been several empty bottles of whiskey about and there was a suspicion he’d taken his own life. No relatives were traced, and a bleak, grey, miserable day a week later found Richard and I and the personnel officer the only attendees at Stanley’s funeral in a bleak, grey, miserable North London Crematorium. The priest in charge didn’t have much to say.

     There was no eulogy as nothing was known about our Alsatian. We could’ve stood up and told the story of our first encounter with him and the chair leg and what a nice man he was but there was no one to tell it to. The 3 of us stood like stone as the coffin rolled behind the curtains and Stanley Alsatian disappeared along with his history, tragically known only by him. Feelings of lonely moorlands and dying crows crept into my mind and I was transported back to Otterburn, Alnmouth and all the tensions of the K&P Oxo shoot. Except here there were no beautiful, wild colours, no majestic landscape, no foreboding hills, no drama of any kind, not even a damaged crow to lighten the atmosphere. Here, there was nothing. The 3 of us travelled to and from the funeral in JWT chairman, John Treasure’s limo. On the way back to Berkeley Square, we tried to talk about Stanley but struggled. There just didn’t seem to be anything to say.



‘Avis. We try harder.’

Noel Headscase: “Hello, there and Welcome to Top Of The Pops. On tonight’s show we don’t have anybody at all except yours truly. The producers and I have decided in our wisdom that we’re all fed up and bored rigid with all that pop crap and that you’d all be better entertained by one of my extremely silly, made up games, which are going to make me a bloody fortune in the future. So if you’re ready, lets get on with it. First of all, you’ll need a bunch of overripe bananas, 3 Biro pens, some sticking plaster, a boiled egg, a can of petrol and a stick of dynamite. Oh, and a copy of the Daily Mirror but it mustn’t be more than a year old. OK? Right, now what you do is this…Oi! Who turned the fucking lights out? Oh well, not to worry. Just pretend I’m on the radio. Right, take the boiled egg and the dynamite...er, shit. Where did I put it all, I can’t see a bloody thing? If I trip over anything, I’ll sue the BBC, just see if I won’t.” SFX: loud explosion….
     “Hello. It’s me again. Bet you thought I trod on the dynamite, didn’t you? Wrong. That wasn’t dynamite, just an extremely loud fart, which I am of course. Just think, in 20 years these idiots will still employ me and my silly fucking games and pay me so much money I’ll be able to have face lifts, boob implants, whole body changes even, so that by that time, I’ll still look exactly the same as I do now. Won’t that be great? YEAH! I hear you say. Mind you, the mind boggles at what Jimmy Savile could do with all this stuff. Still, no worries - he’s not here. He’s on holiday somewhere, fixing it in his trailer.”



* * * * * * * * *


CHAPTER 17. THE SMOKING ROOM.


This thing called love, I just can't handle it
This thing called love, I must get round to it
I ain't ready
Crazy little thing called love

This thing (this thing)
Called love (called love)
It cries (like a baby)
In a cradle all night
It swings (woo woo)
It jives (woo woo)
It shakes all over like a jelly fish
I kinda like it
Crazy little thing called love
There goes my baby
She knows how to rock 'n' roll
She drives me crazy
She gives me hot and cold fever
Then she leaves me in a cool cool sweat

I gotta be cool, relax, get hip
And get on my track's
Take a back seat, hitch-hike
And take a long ride on my motorbike
Until I'm ready
Crazy little thing called love

I gotta be cool, relax, get hip
And get on my track's
Take a back seat (ah hum), hitch-hike (ah hum)
And take a long ride on my motorbike
Until I'm ready (ready Freddie)
Crazy little thing called love

This thing called love, I just can't handle it
This thing called love, I must get round to it
I ain't ready
Ooh ooh ooh ooh

Crazy little thing called love
Crazy little thing called love, yeah, yeah
Crazy little thing called love, yeah, yeah

I’d just lit up when the door opened and Angus Macdonald entered the smoking room clutching his packet of B&H and Ronson gas lighter. He announced his arrival with his familiar grating cough like a throat full of rusty ball bearings. My heart sank.
     “Hi, Neal. I couldn’t find the bloody place. It’s taken me a good 10 minutes to get here from my bloody office. This is the second time they’ve moved it in a month. Have you noticed each time the room gets smaller? They’re trying to squeeze us out. Next thing you know we’ll be all downstairs, outside on the fucking pavement, you mark my words.”
     “I can’t wait.” I said with just a dash of cynicism. Had I been at least half way through my fag, I would’ve got up and left as most people tended to rather than listen to Angus ramble on about nothing of any consequence. But to leave then would’ve have been a touch obvious and a waste of a perfectly good fag.
     “I’ll refuse ta go. I’m no standin’ oot there amongst all the traffic fumes freezin’’ my fuckin’ balls off. They can’t make us do something that’s against health and safety, you know.”
     “If you want to smoke, I think you’ll find they can insist you go outside once they’ve run out of spare rooms. It’s either that, or give up.”
     “There’s nae way I’ll be deein’ that just for them,” he said, cackling defiantly through a stream of smoke fresh from the walls of his lungs and jangling the ball bearings in his throat once more. He shot me a knowing sideways grin that made as much sense as his logic and then changed the subject completely, “I just had to get away from that bitch, Laura,” he coughed, shifting the ball bearings around again and dragging hungrily on his fag. “She’s ambitious, that one. They should watch out for her. She’ll be nothin’ but trouble now she’s no longer freelance and has her foot in the bloody door.” He sat down on the only other chair in the room as a tall, unfamiliar leggy blonde in a light grey suit perched precariously high on patent leather heals entered the smoking room holding a packet of 20 Rothmans Kingsize with one already lodged between her index and middle finger. Angus, the woman hater, sprang up again and offered her the seat extending his arm in a rather clumsy gesture.
     “Would ye like to sit doon?”
     She flashed him a totally false smile for a millisecond and declined, seating herself on an old desk by the radiator and lighting up, “No, you’re all right.”

     Women really seemed to have a peculiarly unsettling effect on Angus. This new one, at least, I’d never seen her before, was no exception. He shut up like a clam and became nervous and uptight like he’d swallowed something a bit more painful than cigarette smoke – maybe a lighted dog end. The girl stared out of the open window, took a long suck of her cigarette and followed her gaze with a stream of exhaled smoke that almost froze solid in the cold air outside. All women were bitches to Angus. At least, that’s the way he described those we all knew. It seemed like a kind of warped defence mechanism against the opposite sex whom despite his years (he must have been in his mid forties) he seemed to have no idea whatsoever how to handle.
     “What was that you were saying about Laura, Angus?” I said, feeling mischievous. He just grinned stupidly and reddened slightly. I had the distinct impression that if he’d had a carving knife about his person, I might have been in trouble. Laura was the woman Angus shared an office with. She was a nice, plain, homely sort of girl of about 33, always cheerful with a quick, dry sense of humour, which obviously sailed way over Angus’s head. Jim Brown entered the room already puffing away on a Silk Cut and immediately smiled at the girl as if he knew her though, judging by the way she looked straight through him, he didn’t.
     “Hi,” Jim said to the girl, in that softly mannered voice of his, totally ignoring her lack of recognition, then, still smiling that little boy lost smile that seemed to melt whichever female he felt like bedding, “Hullo, chaps. Christ, it’s foggy in here.” He leaned against the wall and looked at the girl again still smiling. She didn’t return his gaze, stubbed out her fag on the windowsill and put the remaining half back in the packet and left. Nick swallowed a huge lungful of smoke and held it till his eyes watered then streamed it down his nose.
     “Very tasty,” he said, referring to the girl and not the smoke, as if he was a bit part player in some 1960’s British ‘Kitchen Sink’ movie and, cocking his head towards the door, widened his grin, “It’s about time I got back into blondes again.” Jim, who seemed to exist in the 1960’s where girls were categorised into 3 simple packages: blond, brunette and red head, resembled what was referred to by a popular description from around the same era as an unmade bed, which wasn’t surprising as ten-to-one he’d probably arrived at work hot from some female’s sleeping quarters in the same clothes he’d worn the day before.
     “Ah wouldna’ say noo,” crackled Angus through more rattling ball bearings trying desperately but unconvincingly to be one of the boys.
     “No to what, Al?” said Jim, unnecessarily.
     Angus crackled louder, “Ah wouldna’ ‘ave thought ye of all people needed me ta tell ye that, Jim.” Jim’s reputation as the company rake and general lucky bastard was legendary.
     “Do you reckon he’s ever actually done it?” Jim grinned at me through another stream of exhaled smoke.
     “Who?” I said, pretending I didn’t have the slightest idea. Angus still grinned inanely; vacantly pretending to share the joke, whatever he thought it might be, unaware he was possibly on the verge of being embarrassed beyond endurance for someone as obviously screwed up as he was. I ignored the question and crushed my dog end into the dirty yellowy brown lino with my foot.

     Ironically, the colour range of the whole smoking room seemed to be allied to the nicotine palette; every grimy surface glorified with a covering of dirty yellowy brown paintwork – walls, ceiling, door, window frame, the lot. If ever an environment was designed to discourage the wretched addicts from wilfully poisoning their lungs, this was it. It was a pretty depressing place to be, in this case a redundant storeroom, where those of us who suffered from the cursed habit were forced to retreat to like a load of lepers whenever the craving made its unbearable presence felt once again.

     We were banished away from those self-righteous bastards who were lucky enough never to have been enslaved and worse still, the sanctimonious creeps who had been but had been visited by that sudden divine light that promised cancer, chronic bronchitis, coronary thrombosis in spades and all manner of other dreadful afflictions unless they gave up the weed. The very ambiance of the room, if one could call it that, served to re-enforce the question every smoker perpetually asks themselves after every fag which is: ‘Why the hell did I do that?’ followed by the inevitable flurry of promises to chuck the habit preceded by what seemed suddenly so obvious now that some unseen hand had drawn back the curtain and allowed the light of common sense to creep in.
     “That was horrible - disgusting. I must be out of my tiny bloody mind. That’s it. I’m giving up as from now. I’m never going to have another cigarette. I don’t know why I ever smoked in the first place.”

     Of course, by the time the victim (that’s what all smokers are to my mind) is halfway back to their office, the pangs of guilt and fear are already on the wane, sensibility chucked out the window by the returning pangs of craving for another fag.
     “I don’t reckon he’d know what to do with it if it presented itself to him on a plate,” Jim went on, still grinning at me as if Angus wasn’t in the room. Angus kept smiling too and gave another bone shaking cough, almost prompting my own throat to convulse and evacuate its contents.
     “You busy at the moment, Jim?” I said trying to avoid any further persecution of Angus.

     Not that I was particularly interested in the size of Jim’s work load, but it was the standard question a member of an advertising agency automatically asked of another at any given time. It was a question guaranteed a response. What was more important, after all, than one’s success rate in the noble cause of producing great advertising? Great advertising won awards. Awards were accolades placed upon one’s work by the famous (in advertising terms, that is) amongst one’s peers and awards meant that one also became famous in the advertising fraternity and automatically became more marketable and could sell oneself to the highest bidder and say ‘up yours’ to one’s present bosses as one moved on to another agency for twice what one was already earning which was already 10 times the national average wage. But, to win awards, one had to be busy to begin with and being busy was the only respectable state to be in.

     I closed my ears to Jim’s long-winded reply. I already knew the gist of how the agency would crumble without his talent, of how he was on winking terms with most of the clients he came in contact with and about how one day pretty darn soon he would rush off and start his own agency with a sizable chunk of the present agency’s business. Not that he wasn’t talented - he was actually one of the best copywriters I’d come across, with great ideas frothing from every orifice but he was totally ruthless and out for himself and cared not a jot whom he ground into the dust on his way up the ladder. Dear Jim, whom everybody loved and whom no female this side of Mars could resist, was actually an utter cad and bastard of the first order. He was hired to work with me after Melissa and I decided to go our separate ways.

     At first, I though he was OK. He was obviously talented and had a show real to back that up. We worked our nuts off together and were very productive solving every problem the agency chucked our way. The more problems we solved, the more were chucked, to the point where it all became an almost unmanageable workload, causing me to go to the creative director and demand more money and a company car, and that some of the work be directed elsewhere as everything would suffer damage if we became too snowed under. All my demands were met without argument.

     Things seemed to go well from then on until Jim, who’d been out for a long lunch one day with some mates from a previous agency, returned to the office at about 5.00. obviously well tanked on his favourite tipple, Scotch. Unfortunately, Jim was one of those individuals to whom Scotch acted like Dracula’s blood, causing them to become aggressive and scary.
     “This calls for a drink,” he announced, through a sinister smile, “C’mon. Let’s got to the Barley Mow. The first few Scotches are on me.”

     At that moment, I’d rather have undergone an un-sedated appendectomy, but sensing the occurrence of something far worse if I turned down Jim’s invitation, I went along. Grinning at me over the rim of his drink, Jim told me what was on his mind,
     “You’re holding me up,” he said still grinning, “You’re too much of a perfectionist, what with this typeface and that typeface; this photographer, that photographer, and all that crap. I don’t actually give a fuck. From now on, you’ll do things my way and the way I want them done and at my speed or get out of my fucking way.”

     I apologised to Jim, telling him I was sorry he felt I was holding him back and that I never had any intention other than doing the very best I could to make his superb ideas stand out in the way they deserved, but that if he felt I was cramping his style in any way, I would do my absolute best to see that didn’t happen in the future. I said all this in the gentlest, most non-confrontational way I could, sensing that what Jim really wanted was some kind of showdown ending with him satisfying a weird psycho need to make mashed potato of my face. I’d done a bit of research on my partner and discovered he’d been fired from his last agency for hitting a client, probably after one of his Glasgow juicing sprees. During my bowing and fawning act I was actually thinking,
     “Fuck you, you bucket of scum,” but this was a real dilemma – not just because of the Cadbury’s Smash chops promise, but when a creative team decides to split up it presents the creative director with a problem. The option to swop both team members with members of other teams was on the table but only if there was a team who fancied a change. If not, the only other option was to fire the team with the problem, and, as Jim was my second writer in a pretty short row, it didn’t look good. Dracula continued,
     “As for Peter Gooding, I don’t reckon he’ll last beyond Christmas. He’s useful as creative director at the moment for getting work through those higher up dumb suits, but it won’t be long till I won’t need him at all. All it’ll take is a few words in the right ears and he’ll be on his way.”

     I decided I’d heard enough and at the rate Jim was now swallowing Scotch, the likelihood I would become Mr. Potato Head was looking pretty certain. I stood up, looked at my watch, apologised again for getting in Jim’s way, made my excuses, and made for the pub door, the resolution to bury this piece of shit as deeply and quickly as possible firmly cemented in my mind. Basically, I grassed him up, the notion being that it was him or me. I’d known Peter Gooding long enough to know he’d at least consider the options carefully. I arranged a meeting with him the following day. He listened as I told him exactly what Jim had said including the stuff about Peter himself.

     Peter didn’t react in any way and we didn’t discuss things further. He simply told me to leave it with him and that he’d get back to me. He did, about 3 days later. A copywriter had just resigned leaving the department with a spare art director. Peter told me he was teaming this guy with Jim and that he was hiring a writer to work with me. This was to be a quite famous bod in the business, Alan Day, whom I’d met at the previous agency, when he was hired as a freelancer to work on a special project which no-one else seemed able to cope with. Peter Day had 2 reputations – one as a top creative copywriter with stunning work under his belt; the other as a tough bugger with a temper to match. I knew he’d worked with an art director Melissa knew and I asked her what her friend had thought of the experience. Her answer was short and to the point.
     “He’s a cunt.”

     This proved to the case. I was finishing a shoot on the day we were first due to work together so I called him at the office to tell him I’d be late. He sounded OK, told me it wasn’t a problem and that he’d make a start on the first brief. When I eventually turned up, he seemed friendly enough, standing up, smiling shaking my hand.
     “Here, come and look at this,” he said grabbing my arm and pulling me over to his desk. On the layout pad was a line drawing of a girl in a white hat with a headline I didn’t understand, and which was so obscure, I can’t remember what it was. “What d’you reckon?” he said bubbling over with enthusiasm.

     I didn’t know what to say and what I did say turned out to be an almost suicidal comment. It was something like, “Hmmm, Yeah. But I don’t think it’ll set the world on fire.”
     His reaction was pretty definite. I was shoved across the room followed by the layout pad, flying through the air, and Day’s immediate tirade “IF YOU’RE SO FUCKING CLEVER, YOU COME UP WITH AN IDEA!” “Not a good start to the relationship,” I thought.

     I could hardly go and complain to Peter Gooding again so I decided to try and make the best of it. Alan Day and I worked together for about 6 months and it was a nightmare. It wasn’t a total failure and we did make a commercial together though, again I didn’t really understand the concept I don’t think anyone else really did either, but he was able to get the thing approved by the agency and the client, mainly I figured because they were all so scared of him they just wanted to get the thing out of the way, whatever the financial cost. George Cherry, the agency’s head of TV, was summoned to a meeting with Day and me in an agency presentation theatre so Day could show Cherry his reel. It was impressive, and contained some great, quite famous commercials, but Cherry was obviously very busy and left halfway through the performance. Day was almost apoplectic with rage. A couple of days later I was walking past the office of Della Smith, the creative co-ordinator, and she called me in. She told me she’d had George Cherry in her office shaking like a leaf and saying he’d been attacked by Alan Day early that morning. Della obviously found the incident amusing judging by the huge smile on her chops. I went straight back to our office and confronted Mr. Day. His face twisted into a weird mask of what I can only describe as satisfied hatred.
     “Yes, I really got the bastard. I waited for him in his office. How dare he walk out when I’m showing him my reel?”
     “What the hell did you do?”
     Not much. I just shook him about a bit and told him if he ever treated me so disrespectfully again he’d be sorry. I think he got the message,” Day said through a salivating grin.

     I went to see George Cherry. He got up with a start when I entered his office, clearly as nervous as a cornered rat. George, a foppish sort of bloke, sat down again and mopped his brow with the yellow polka dot hanky he kept in the breast pocket of his jacket.
     “What he hell’s been going on, George?” I enquired, somewhat earnestly.
     “That bloody partner of yours, Peter Day. He attacked me. He was waiting for me early this morning. He was hiding behind the door, for Christ’s sake. He grabbed me by the lapels and shoved me up against the wall. He threatened me. His face was so close to mine I could feel his fucking spit, and just because I had to leave his bloody presentation. I’m a busy man. I haven’t got time to sit around listening to him polishing his fucking ego.”
     “What are you going to do about it?”
     “I’m not sure. Probably nothing. Della said I could probably take proceedings against that lunatic. Maybe even get him fired. But I don’t think that’s really the way I’d want to go. Besides, he’ll probably wait for me up some dark alley or other.”

     George started grinning but was obviously really shaken up. I assured him I had nothing to do with it all and certainly had no idea what Day was going to do. George said it had never entered his mind and that as far as he was concerned the agency had unknowingly hired a certifiable maniac. I had to concur. Shortly after, I heard on the grapevine that Day had been chatting to an old friend of his, another art director at the agency, whose writer was leaving and that the two of them wanted to join up again. I faced Day with the rumour and he showed signs of having been caught with his fingers in the sweetie jar, but all I wanted was confirmation it was true so that I could start to sleep at night. He did go off and work with Jeff, his mate, and I was put with a freelance lady writer. For some reason, I’d never really worked very well with women, but anything was better than what I’d just been through. That’s not to be detrimental to lady writers, or women in business generally, but they’re usually pretty tough, and sometimes scary, Melissa Story being a good illustration of that.

     Day and Jeff went of to do a job at the agency’s Madrid office, Jeff coming back a day later in a terrible state saying that Day had lost his temper while they were working and threw a heavy ash tray through the surface of a glass table. Day left the agency soon after. One way and another, advertising was always an interesting place to work.

     Long before, Nick had finished the run-down on his workload, (not that I was really listening) Angus had thankfully left the smoking room with a last rattling cough and cheery waive and gone back to simmer in the company of that bitch, Laura.

Don’t forget the Fruit Gums. Mum.

Arthur Daily: “There you are, Terrence. What time d’you call this?”
T: “Half past 4. What time d’you call it?”
A.D.: “That’s enough of…What the…Why are you wearin’ a dress?”
T: “I just fancied a change.”
A.D.: “That’s all well and good, but I can’t be seen bein’ minded by a bloke in a dress. I mean, what will people think?”
T.: “You told me you don’t care what people think.”
A.D.: “I don’t. Not generally. But this…this is…”
T.: “What?”
A.D.: “It’s embarrasin’ is what it is.”
T.: “I’m not embarrassed.”
A.D: “Try goin’ into the Winchester dressed like that and you will be!”
T.: “I already have.”
A.D.: “What, bin in the Winchester in that thing?”
T.: “Sure. I was in there yesterday.”
A.D: “Well, what happened? Dave must’ve chucked you out.”
T.: “He was very complimentary, as it happens. Said he thought the colour really suited me. He said the stockin’s were really me, ‘n all, so there. Anyway, I’m on me way round there now. Fancy it?”
A.D.: “But I’ve got things to do and I need mindin’.”
T.: “Well, you’ll have to come with me, if you want any mindin’ done, ‘cos that where I’m goin’.”
A.D.: “This is most inconvenient, Terrence. Most inconvenient. Lets go, then if we must.”
T.: “Er, you can’t go dressed like that.”
A.D.: “What?”
T.: “It’s dresses only in the Winchester from now on.”
A.D.: “You’re jokin’!”
D.: “Fraid not, son. But no worries - I’ve got a spare one in the car. You can borrow that.”
A.D.: “That’s no good.”
D.: “Why not?”
A.D.: “It doesn’t fit.”
D.: “How the hell d’you know that?”
A.D.: “I tried it on the other day.”
D.: “You bloody perve!”



* * * * * * *